‘Alice is still chugging along, though she’s showing clear signs of a personality breakdown’: Meduza readers describe how attacks on Yandex data centers are changing their work and daily lives — Meduza
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After repeated Russian attacks on data centers in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces began striking Yandex’s data centers. From October 8 to 11, Ukrainian drones reached three of the company’s data centers: in Sasovo in the Ryazan region, Kaluga, and Vladimir. A major outage followed, affecting Yandex’s services and companies that used Yandex Cloud storage. Millions of people in Russia and other countries felt the effects: Many couldn’t use taxi services or maps, for example, and lost access to their cloud files and money in Yandex Pay. It took until October 13 for Yandex Pay to be partially restored. Meduza asked readers how disruptions to Yandex products and other businesses connected to the company had affected their daily lives and work. We received hundreds of letters and are publishing the most interesting ones.

[“Alice” - named in the headline - is a Russian generative AI chatbot and digital personal assistant.]

Natasha, Moscow

On Sunday [October 11], everything looked okay at first when I ordered a taxi, but then all I could see on the screen were two messages: “Searching for a car” and “Loading trip details.” It stayed that way for half an hour. When I gave up and headed for the subway, the driver called and asked where to pick me up. Apparently, he’d noticed my location marker moving away …

Then I discovered that the payment method had switched from card to cash, and I didn’t have any cash on me. I couldn’t switch it back because the app was still showing the same “Searching for a car” and “Loading details” messages. Restarting it didn’t help.

I said, “Can I send you a bank transfer?” The driver said, “To Yandex Bank.” I opened the banking app, and there was a message saying, “We’ll have everything fixed soon”… It turned out the driver’s other accounts were blocked. Luckily, I managed to reach some friends nearby who had cash …

…

Ivan, Yekaterinburg

I can’t access my photo and video archive on Yandex Disk. My whole life is in there — from when I was young to photos of my kids. Right now, you can’t download anything, only view it. And some files look like they’re gone for good — they won’t even open in preview mode …

Now it all depends on how well Yandex designed its recovery system [for restoring files after an outage — Meduza]. I’d like to believe they’ve taken all the necessary steps on their end.

Either way, Putin and his gang bear all the responsibility.

…

Stanislav, Nizhny Novgorod

I couldn’t make a payment on my credit card from another bank because all my money is in a Yandex savings account. I had to borrow from people I know to avoid getting hit with interest. It’s not like you can explain to the other bank why you can’t pay.

Hundreds, probably even thousands, of people are in the same situation. Many can’t make their mortgage or loan payments or pay their rent. All of this will damage their credit histories and cause financial problems, because if you don’t meet your credit card’s terms, you can get hit with outrageous interest.

I’m definitely moving half my money to another bank, even if the terms aren’t as good.

…

Kirill, Novosibirsk

I’m a taxi driver. It’s my main source of income. My work has come to a standstill … There are no alternatives. Yandex has taken over the entire market. I have nothing fit to print to say about what’s going on.

…

Alex, Balakovo, Saratov region

Taxi drivers are waiting at bus stops, store registers are glitching, Kinopoisk isn’t working, and neither is Alice. I wanted to download my data from cloud storage, but no luck … I’ll buy an 18-terabyte drive and keep all my files on it.

Dodging responsibility whenever something beyond your control happens is a way of life in Russia. It’s cheap and underhanded, though predictable. Our family, like the rest of the world, stopped recognizing Russia’s government as legitimate long ago, so whatever they come up with over there [in the Kremlin] is their business alone. There have never been so many spectacular idiots in the State Duma — the concentration of insanity is off the charts. When is Ukraine finally going to start hitting their dachas on Rublyovka?!

…

[The linked article provides many other testimonials.]

Archived

Edit:

Meanwhile, the Kremlin says the government is discussing Yandex’s problems after Ukrainian strikes on its data centres.

… Asked whether the ​government was considering a mechanism to ‌compensate ⁠users, [Kremlin spokesman ⁠Dmitry Peskov] said Yandex was “currently facing difficulties, and of course the matter is ​being ​discussed by ⁠the government, but the company is ​taking urgent steps to ​address ⁠the consequences of the attack” … “The company is strong ⁠and ​powerful,” Peskov told ​reporters …

  • RidderSport@feddit.orgEnglish
    23·
    5 days ago

    I was aware that Yandex is omnipresent in Russia. The scale of outage and its effects are way bigger than I’d have thought though.

    It should however also serve as an example on how we should prepare for server outages and data loss

      • wltr@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        21·
        5 days ago

        For millions of users, what would be the backup strategy? Basically you need just another data centre to backup the data, right?

        • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
          21·
          5 days ago

          No? Just a hdd you pass along to a friend or family.

          Edit nowadays maybe dvds are a better medium.

            • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
              6·
              5 days ago

              I think having a possibly imperfect offsite 3rd backup is more important than getting stuck in perfectionism, yes those are worse mediums but if that’s all you have on hand its the best storage medium.

          • wltr@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            11·
            4 days ago

            No guys, I meant the backups strategy for a company this scale. Those are millions of HDDs. Each server’s HDD has to be duplicated, isn’t it? You won’t simply use USB disk for those. Unless you’d juggle them all day long.

            • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
              2·
              4 days ago

              Won’t somebody think of the megacorps! Sorry don’t know don’t care.

              I’m not a megacorp are you?

              • wltr@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                4 days ago

                I’m not, obviously. Just wondering that having all your data at theirs means no proper backups and someone else having access to it. Like, why would you want that then?

            • UiUiUiUiUi@piefed.nlEnglish
              1·
              4 days ago

              Also unnecessary, LTO tapes come in huge sizes nowadays. (I can somewhat understand that important infrastructure needs large data storage)

              • wltr@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                2 days ago

                Didn’t know, thanks! Still, 30 TB isn’t much, is it? I can have a disk this size. I assume the tape is much cheaper, but I need to write this tapes non-stop then, if I were the megacorp. Especially when the data changes all the time. Say, a Flickr user would usually not change their old photos, only adding new. But having a service like Dropbox being backed up this way… feels very difficult, unless it’s entirely automated. (Never heard of the tapes. Well, maybe once, but never explored further.)

                I assume that’s too expensive for me to backup, say, family photos and videos this way. Right? Would be cool to have a super disk like that lying around. My bet the equipment needed is super expensive and big, so enterprise only.

  • susieq0044@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    9·
    5 days ago

    The mention of Rublyovka (the unofficial name for the ultra-wealthy, prestigious residential area located in the western suburbs of Moscow) as a possible target was an interesting one.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgEnglish
    71·
    5 days ago

    Maybe after all it is not the best idea to make everything dependent on ai datacenters.

    Imagine some attacker like Iran would manage to bomb most AWS datacenters in the US. That would bring back life to 17th century standards pretty quickly.