From Mashable · Matt Binder · · 1m 10s
Yandex Outage: Cloudflare Clarifies Bot Activity Impact
Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers disrupted Russian bot traffic but not social media disinformation campaigns.
In brief
Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers disrupted Russian bot traffic but not social media disinformation campaigns. Cloudflare reports Yandex drone strikes caused 99% drop in Yandex Search traffic and 90% in Yandex.Cloud, but bot operators migrated systems without affecting social media disinformation…
Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex
Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centers over the past week.
Zelenskyy claims drop in Russian bot activity
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed sudden drop in Russian bot activity and political disinformation campaigns.
Cloudflare reports bot disruption
Cloudflare found some bot interruption but operators migrated systems to alternative cloud providers.
Yandex Search and Cloud traffic drops
Yandex Search traffic fell 99 percent and Yandex.Cloud dropped 90 percent below pre-attack baseline.
Bot activity on Yandex.Cloud drops
Bot activity on Yandex.Cloud dropped 40 percent with attack-like categories falling 90 percent or more.
Cloudflare's Radar service limitations
Radar does not have visibility into HTTP traffic for specific platforms like X or Reddit.
Cloudflare's conclusion on impact
Cloudflare data does not support claims that strikes crippled social media disinformation campaigns.
What to remember
Cloudflare reports Yandex drone strikes caused 99% drop in Yandex Search traffic and 90% in Yandex.Cloud, but bot operators migrated systems without affecting social media disinformation.
