Yandex Confirms Permanent Data Loss Following Drone Attacks
The company is tightening security measures after losing data from its supercomputer facilities
Russian technology giant Yandex has officially confirmed that a portion of its data was permanently erased following attacks in early October. While the company successfully recovered 97.16% of the information, 2.84% was lost entirely due to technical damage and the absence of available backups.
Attacks on Supercomputers
The incidents began on 8 October when Ukrainian drones targeted and damaged a Yandex facility in the Ryazan region. This site housed two of the company’s most powerful supercomputers, Chervonenkis and Lyapunov, which boast a combined performance exceeding 50 petaflops. The attacks continued over the following days in the Kaluga and Vladimir regions, where the company’s third supercomputer, Galushkin, was also damaged.
In total, approximately five data centres belonging to Yandex, Sberbank, and VK were targeted in Russia during October. Yandex has not disclosed the specific nature of the lost information or the number of affected users. However, the company noted that data belonging to users who had already activated backup features prior to the attacks remains fully secure.
Changes to Security Policy
Following the events, Yandex has implemented new security mechanisms. When creating virtual machines on the company’s cloud platform, the backup feature will now be activated automatically. While users still retain the option to disable it, this measure is intended to enhance data protection standards. Additionally, a new service zone (ru-central1-f) has been opened, providing an extra physical location for data hosting.
The incident has sparked serious concern within the Russian business sector. Industry representatives state that local companies are actively considering relocating their databases abroad, specifically to Kazakhstan. The primary reason for this move is the perceived risk to Russian infrastructure and the potential for business process disruptions.
It is currently unclear how significant this business exodus will be or what impact it will have on Russia's technological ecosystem. However, these events highlight the critical importance of cloud service resilience and diversified data backups in the modern digital world.