Russian bot traffic falls after Ukraine attacks Yandex data centre

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 12 Oct, 18:07 · Archive

Ukrainian drone strikes on a Yandex data centre in Russia have caused a dramatic reduction in automated bot traffic online.

Ukrainian drone strikes on a Yandex data centre in Vladimir, a city 120 miles east of Moscow, on Sunday have caused a dramatic reduction in automated bot traffic across social media platforms. Yandex is often referred to as Russia's Google. Almost all of its services, including maps, banking applications and food-ordering platforms, were taken offline following the attack.

Data from internet infrastructure company Cloudflare shows bot traffic from Yandex fell by 99 per cent compared to the week before the attack. The effect was immediate: traffic dropped to nearly zero on Sunday morning after the strikes and had not recovered to normal levels at the time of reporting. Yandex confirmed it was working to restore access to its services.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Warsaw Security Forum in Poland that since the drone strikes, 'there was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots'. European Parliament member Tomáš Zdechovský noted that online activity around the far-right Alternative for Germany party had also plummeted when Yandex went offline, suggesting that Yandex data centres may have hosted bot farms used to amplify such content.

Social media users have reported seeing fewer automated responses to their posts since the attack. The strikes are part of a broader Ukrainian effort to attack Russia's internet infrastructure.

How it is being reported

• Have Russian bots dropped off after Ukraine attacked its data centres?'There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations.'Metro · 12 Oct, 17:53
• People are rejoicing about the removal of Russian bots from social media – but the truth is far more complicatedBot traffic has really reduced in wake of an attack on a Russian internet company – but it doesn’t tell the full storyIndependent Tech · 12 Oct, 11:48

In this story: Ukraine · Russia · Yandex · Volodymyr Zelensky · Cloudflare · Vladimir · Tomáš Zdechovský

This summary was written by AI from the headlines and standfirsts above, and states as fact only what at least two outlets report. How we use AI · Report a problem