Yandex Cloud Outages Follow Drone Strikes on Three Russian Data Centers

Russian cloud provider Yandex confirmed that physical drone attacks have damaged three of its data centers, resulting in significant service disruptions for customers. According to BleepingComputer, the strikes forced the company to shut down two facilities completely and partially disable a third. The incidents occurred at locations in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir, with attacks reported on October 8, 9, and 11 respectively.

The risk

The physical destruction of infrastructure has created an unstable operating environment for Yandex’s cloud services. The company stated on its status page that it considers the remaining resource configuration unstable and has entered emergency operating mode. Technical support communication channels are also reported to be unstable, complicating troubleshooting efforts for affected users. Yandex teams are working around the clock but cannot provide a reliable timeline for full service restoration.

Who is exposed

Yandex customers are experiencing various levels of service interruption, including an inability to access files stored on the company’s cloud infrastructure. Specific services such as Monium remain offline, while Compute, AI Studio, and security services are only partially available. Other components, including the Console, API, IAM, Container Registry, databases, S3 storage, and Kubernetes, are available but suffer from performance or availability issues. One customer reported missing thumbnails and download failures for Yandex Disk backups starting October 8.

Cost and compliance

Much of Russia’s internet infrastructure, serving both government and private-sector organizations, relies on Yandex’s services, making these outages widespread. EU MEP Tomáš Zdechovský highlighted a potential connection between the Yandex outages and a sudden drop in communication from online accounts promoting far-right ideals in Germany. Yandex reported no injuries related to these incidents, but the operational impact extends beyond simple downtime to broader connectivity issues for dependent businesses and public entities.

What to watch

Business leaders should monitor Yandex’s status page for updates on service restoration, though no reliable timeline is currently available. The company explicitly recommends using alternative disaster recovery plans due to the emergency operating mode. Managers should verify the availability of critical data and applications hosted on Yandex infrastructure and prepare for continued instability in technical support channels.

What to do and how to stay safe: Yandex

• Verify if your organization relies on Yandex Cloud services and check current service status against your critical application dependencies.
• Activate existing disaster recovery plans to shift workloads to alternative infrastructure providers or on-premises systems.
• Monitor alternative communication channels for updates, as Yandex technical support channels are reported to be unstable.
• Ensure local backups of critical data are current and accessible, as cloud storage access and file downloads may be interrupted.

General security guidance from the SecOps Signal newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.

Frequently asked questions

Which Yandex data centers were affected by the drone attacks?

The data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir were damaged, with Sasovo and Vladimir shut down and Kaluga operating with degraded performance.

Is Yandex providing a timeline for service restoration?

No, Yandex stated it cannot provide a reliable service-restoration timeline and has urged customers to use alternative infrastructure.

Are there any reported injuries from these incidents?

Yandex reported no injuries related to the drone attacks on its data centers.