The expert spoke about the consequences of the Ukrainian Armed Forces strikes on Yandex data centers

Damage to three key Yandex data centers led to service disruptions in Serbia, Kazakhstan and several other countries. The consequences for the infrastructure can be serious, and some of the data may be irretrievably lost. On October 11, the deputy director of the Institute of High-Tech Law of the MIE, Heinrich Devyatkin, told Izvestia about this.

"The damage affected three key data centers. <...> Complaints are being received that services are not working in Serbia, Kazakhstan and a number of other countries," the expert noted.

According to him, any IT companies have serious capacities, and they are all physically located somewhere. The expert noted that, contrary to popular belief that everything is stored in the cloud, this is indeed often the case, but the cloud itself is on the ground. There are huge buildings on the ground with a lot of equipment, including video cards and servers that provide data storage.

Devyatkin compared the infrastructure to paths, where there are three key hubs. According to him, if at least one is damaged, the difficulty is immediately felt, and if three — the consequences are more serious. He expressed the hope that there are spare spare capacities that we may not know about, and they should already be used.

However, the expert doubts that there are enough backup centers. He gave an analogy with a private house: if the regular electricity is turned off, the owner starts a gasoline generator, which is enough for a refrigerator, a pump and something small, but there is no longer enough for an electric kettle and an iron. According to Devyatkin, it is hardly worth hoping for the existence of a data center of a similar level, since it is economically unprofitable to build backups of all resources. At the same time, he noted that in the information security model, developers laid 20-30, and maybe 40% of backup devices, but where they are, one can only guess.

The expert added that servers are expensive, there are few of them, and they can occupy the area of several football fields. According to him, each server is responsible for a specific cell: something for delivery, something for taxi. Given the critical shortage of servers in Russia as a whole, he doesn't even know where to get them. Restoration, according to him, will be expensive, and let the company's representatives officially announce the terms.

Devyatkin stressed that the incident has already led to certain losses, and this is well known. Therefore, according to him, something will be lost, some data will remain irretrievably lost, and this must be recognized. He also mentioned that some people suggest building data centers underground, but he doesn't know how useful this is. He concluded that, in his opinion, the military will be able to find the right recipe.

Inglorious attempts: Kiev is distracting from the situation on the front line with strikes on the Moscow region

The intensity of such attacks will inevitably decrease due to the exhaustion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the saturation of the Russian air defense, experts believe.

On October 11, Yandex reported that the infrastructure of the company's data center was damaged as a result of the UAV attack in Vladimir. It was clarified that no one was injured in the incident. The company warned that the current configuration of resources remains unstable, and the platform is operating in emergency mode.

Residents of Moscow told Izvestia on the same day that Yandex was experiencing disruptions, for example, it was almost impossible to call a taxi the first time. One of the taxi drivers reported that the service was not working well. He drove up with the order, but the customer said he was staying at home and hadn't ordered a taxi at all. According to the driver, the customer was minding his own business and was unaware of the order.