Yet another Hacker News

Yandex bot traffic down 99% after data center attack

191 points rooftopzen 1 hour ago 77 comments

sznio 1 hour ago | parent

I don't use X myself, but my friends told me there's a noticable reduction in hateful tweets, at least in the Polish sphere. Much less comments blaming Ukrainians for everything wrong with the world.

Dkuku 1 hour ago | parent

What about true social?

maelito 1 hour ago | parent

Same in Germany : AFD's activity went abruptly down apparently.

justinnk 34 minutes ago | parent

Can you link a reliable source for this? The only thing I could find online was someone claiming this with a chart that does not refer to Afd at all.

the_mitsuhiko 19 minutes ago | parent

As far as I can tell there is no reliable data that would indicate any of that.

Freedom2 58 minutes ago | parent

I've actually seen less controversial comments here on HN as well.

stackghost 19 minutes ago | parent

That’s on me. I’ve been commenting less.

meowface 42 minutes ago | parent

I hate Russia with a passion and strongly support Ukraine, but this kind of convenient narrative always makes me suspicious. (I use Twitter daily and haven't necessarily noticed anything.)

Reminds me of when 4channers said 4chan's daily interracial posting went way down on October 7, 2023. (It didn't.)

I could believe this, but not before I see a good empirical analysis. Until then, it just feels like typical folk gossip.

Eji1700 36 minutes ago | parent

Seconded. The amount of "someone who claims to be on my side has a bad view, must be a bot!" is absurd.

People have been problematic since recorded time, and the whole "well X% of internet traffic is bots!" doesn't mean the % you're interacting with is just that.

99.99% (totally made up for example) of the emails I am probably sent are spam, those are filtered automatically before I even see them by the various email providers, and of the remaining .01% some still slips through.

I feel that there's somewhat of a similar disconnect between "x amount of traffic is bots" and people assuming that means that supposed ally who says horrible things is a bot (...or psyop..or false flag...or etc...)

parineum 30 minutes ago | parent

I always assumed that all of those people were correct, everyone they were arguing with is a bot. What I think they overlooked is that everyone they agreeing with is a bot too.

conception 32 minutes ago | parent

Russia’s use of social media to influence western thought and sow discord is pretty well documented (even in their geopolitical texts).

Eg https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328006677_Weaponizi...

This is an easy topic to find empirical analysis.

meowface 23 minutes ago | parent

No, I know. That doesn't necessarily mean these Yandex data centers being hit affected that yesterday and today, though. For a variety of different possible reasons.

ikt 18 minutes ago | parent

right, so far we have yandex search crawler went offline

yet to see any evidence of anything else going down

Zanfa 27 minutes ago | parent

EDMO published an analysis on the topic[0] of "independent anti-vax influencers" unrelated to Russia, suddenly pushing viewpoints that explicitly benefit Russia in a coordinated manner.

[0] https://edmo.eu/publications/how-covid-19-conspiracy-theoris...

Geof25 38 minutes ago | parent

Either Ukraine was aiming exactly for that or it is just a coincidence and Ukraine is going to exploit it further because reducing Russian bot activity will reduce visibility for parties which are openly hostile to Ukraine (like AfD) which reduces their ability to get into power.

ericmay 33 minutes ago | parent

It’s also possible the US and UK gave targeting information or helped Ukraine with site selection. It’s not like we don’t know where this stuff is coming from.

CursedSilicon 30 minutes ago | parent

US? Absolutely not

UK? Quite possibly. Given their recent admission (finally) around the Russian propaganda for Brexit

throw93038300 24 minutes ago | parent

Most of those drones have starlink recivers.

UK has no infra to target even their own missiles. They always had to use US!

bluegatty 23 minutes ago | parent

US is helping with targeting and a lot of things.

ruperthair 20 minutes ago | parent

Thanks for the pointer to that Brexit story. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6jdm3zggl0ko for anyone else who's not seen it.

riffraff 14 minutes ago | parent

US seems unlikely given Trump just made a deal to give money to Russia in exchange for diesel and blamed Ukraine for gas prices.

I mean, sure, maybe some random person at the Pentagon could have done it but the US has not acted as a Ukraine ally for years now.

tonyedgecombe 6 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

tonyedgecombe 9 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

vjk800 28 minutes ago | parent

With some analysis, it might be possible to figure out which accounts were Russian trolls by comparing tweet frequency with the timing of these bombings.

There's of course the obvious, low effort trolling, but I'd think there are also more subtle, maybe more intellectually equipped information warfare going on.

EmilStraad 13 minutes ago | parent

A German friend said support for the AfD completely evaporated. Gone.

mr_mitm 4 minutes ago | parent

German here. I wish. AfD polls highest out of all parties, based on several independent polling organizations. [1] It's not plausible that online support evaporates over night.

[1] https://www.dkriesel.com/_media/sonntagsfrage_wahl2025.png

baxtr 12 minutes ago | parent

I would love to see less shit posts here as well

komali2 1 hour ago | parent

This is being documented across the internet. Pro AfD posting plummeted and pro Trump posting plummeted.

It makes me wonder whether activists should have been targeting these operations sooner. I had no idea they were so centralized.

rooftopzen 1 hour ago | parent

Curious where it’s being documented - this is a fascinating study (who knows how long time period to measure its impact will last) - do you have links?

jmward01 1 hour ago | parent

I haven't seen this effect documented but if it isn't being documented it really needs to be. We need to get -very- mad about the soft wars being waged right now and the first step is to understand the extent of what is going on and by who. We all know that bots are driving a massive amount of engagement right now. It is rare though to see such direct causal proof of where it is coming from.

anigbrowl 1 hour ago | parent

It's hard to document on the major platforms because neither X nor Meta provide easy access to streaming APIs that researchers might use to verify such claims. Last time I looked X was about $60k/year, for example.

jojobas 1 hour ago | parent

Activists? You think the Russian propaganda machine can be defeated by activists?

michaelhoney 47 minutes ago | parent

Sure, if enough activists are involved, with sufficient skill and compute.

komali2 32 minutes ago | parent

What's a government if not a bunch of organized activists?

Jean-Papoulos 38 minutes ago | parent

Can someone post the actual data sources for this ? I keep seeing people claim this and even post graphs, but 0 sources.

accountrequired 25 minutes ago | parent

Source: trust me bro

mr_mitm 21 minutes ago | parent

Would you mind posting at least one link? If it's actually documented across the internet, this should take you no time. A bunch of anecdotes does not count, though.

jdw64 1 hour ago | parent

Looking at the destruction of Yandex data centers, these days it shows how terrifying drones are as weapons. I'm curious about how to defend against such drones. Are kamikaze drones a method of exploding on a target after image learning?

Robdel12 50 minutes ago | parent

I’m sure I’m wrong, but I remember reading about lasers being used as a cost effective defense mechanism

Something like https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-military-laser-shoots-down-c...

jdw64 50 minutes ago | parent

very thanks!

cyberax 4 minutes ago | parent

They are nearly useless. Lasers work with the direct line-of-sight, and the most recent iteration drones can fly just a few _meters_ over the terrain. And they can approach from any direction.

So lasers or turrets can work if you want to defend a military base in the middle of a desert, but not something that can be deployed in cities.

Apparently, the most efficient method so far is interceptor drones.

vkou 23 minutes ago | parent

> these days it shows how terrifying drones are as weapons.

They aren't fundamentally different from a hundreds of assholes sitting in an airplane 25,000 feet above you, flying above the ceiling of your flak and air interceptors, dropping a few thousand tons of firebombs on your town.

> I'm curious about how to defend against such drones.

Looking at what most of their targets have in common, I'd say that there's an easy answer to that - don't start wars.

ron_k 1 hour ago | parent

Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041619

xvxvx 1 hour ago | parent

For those claiming a drop in hate speech on social media, I’ve yet to see examples of this. Plenty of claims, no examples.

toxik 1 hour ago | parent

Is this sarcasm? You don't see a lack of something. That's what it means. To prove a reduction you have to look at aggregate statistics and sentiment analysis.

swarnie 54 minutes ago | parent

I would like to see some evidence.

Previously we can point to data and see things like Scotland Independence accounts all go quite on mass when Iran goes offline, or the OSRS player base go down and the gold price spike when Venezuela has a blackout.

I've seen no analysis connecting Yandex's sabotage to a drop in hate speech on the English speaking internet.

input_sh 8 minutes ago | parent

You will not see any such analyses, as it is now impossible to make them.

We genuinely have nothing but vibes now, as we have like 4 social media sites that have collectively decided to severely limit their APIs or straight up kill research-focused tools (like Facebook's own CrowdTangle) around 2023-2024.

jadamson 47 minutes ago | parent

That's what he's asking for, but it seems Xitter becoming a walled garden has killed those old "trend" charting sites that used to exist around it.

podocarp 45 minutes ago | parent

What? At night I definitely see a lack of sun. He's exactly asking for statistics.

thinkingemote 36 minutes ago | parent

Since this submission is kind of on the topic of trolling, I miss good old fashioned forum troll comments like this. non political, not immediately obvious, cortisol provoking (7/10)

aschla 12 minutes ago | parent

Keith Ledger was a terrible Batman.

lsofzz 1 hour ago | parent

According to Cloudflare, US still accounts for majority of the bot traffic though. https://radar.cloudflare.com/bots?dateRange=12w#bot-traffic-...

Yandex is just a drop in the ocean bud.

simondotau 26 minutes ago | parent

Those CF country stats are certifiably useless. They only know the last hop. We know that consumer routers and web browser extensions are vulnerable. There are plenty of ways to bounce malicious traffic through assumed-organic hosts. These are almost impossible to track, especially given the prevalence of CGNAT.

No serious person would ever claim that Russian cyber influence operations were sending traffic directly from Russian IP addresses. That's 'Get Smart' levels of absurdity. It's as ridiculous as a Russian spy pretending to be an American while speaking with a thick Russian accent.

RamblingCTO 16 minutes ago | parent

As the other commenter said, not helpful. If you go with cf countries, Germany is one of the worst offenders. But only because it has Frankfurt as a big traffic node and lots of hosting providers.

gritzko 1 hour ago | parent

This graph shows that Yandex Web crawler farm was hit. The other option, it was shut down to accommodate more critical services that got hit. (I worked for Yandex 20 years ago, one crawler guy was in the same room.) Not sure if troll farms got affected in any way, that is a different business entirely, no overlap.

The interesting aspect is this: Yandex was taken from its owners semi-consensually. Similarly, the original owner of the troll farms was blown up in a business jet. He staged a mutiny cause his dirty bloody business was about to be taken from him non-consensually. Some other large non-consensual takeovers unfold for 5 years, soon 6.

What an appetite!

alterom 20 minutes ago | parent

You really should mention chef-cum-media-mogul-cum-PMC-commander Prigozhin by name.

Yevheniy Prigozhin, of Wagner PMC fame lately (and ultimately):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Prigozhin

> Not sure if troll farms got affected in any way, that is a different business entirely, no overlap.

Was a different business. Before the "consensual" takeover.

After the takeover, there's only one business that matters: do what they tell you.

yokoprime 1 hour ago | parent

An important detail for those, like me, who have't kept up with the news: this was drone strike against a yandex data center, not cyber attack.

Hamuko 56 minutes ago | parent

Multiple drone strikes, against three different data centers.

charcircuit 50 minutes ago | parent

This is sad to see considering Yandex seems to be the only company with a proper image search right now.

DocJade 43 minutes ago | parent

It's actually incredible how terrible google images seems in comparison. Yandex is just so, so good for reverse image search

nomilk 48 minutes ago | parent

This is a great example of a headline that has two completely different meanings to two different groups.

Many are (incorrectly) interpreting 'bot traffic' to mean something like "fake users on social media that leave comments and 'likes' supporting right-wing posts". (something Russian bots were accused of during the 2016 US presidential election)

But Yandex is like Russia's Google. Both Google and Yandex need to scrape the internet in order to index (no indexing means the site would not appear in search results).

So Yandex datacenters going down meant so too did their 'bots' that visit sites to index them. Nothing to do with 'bots' as per the Russia collusion allegations a la the 2016 election.

cluckindan 31 minutes ago | parent

How do you know that?

foltik 22 minutes ago | parent

How do you think Cloudflare gets this bot traffic metric?

f311a 20 minutes ago | parent

He can read and think.

mr_mitm 19 minutes ago | parent

Here is their definition of "bot": https://developers.cloudflare.com/radar/glossary/#verified-b...

fouc 11 minutes ago | parent

Exactly what I think is happening here, confusion between web crawler bots and the other sort of bots.

makerofthings 42 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if their SREs have a 'Drone strike' playbook.

INTPenis 10 minutes ago | parent

They could be dead you know. I wouldn't joke around, we're all in the same business after all. I'm sure the SRE's didn't decide who rented space in their DC.

atmosx 3 minutes ago | parent

I’m afraid it’s going to be a popular runbook if ppl don’t get their shit together quickly.

victorbjorklund 40 minutes ago | parent

Thanks Ukraine

deanc 31 minutes ago | parent

There's a lot of ancedotes "I've seen hatespeech drop" etc. This is measurable and there are people measuring this kind of thing. Let's wait for some real data.

john_minsk 27 minutes ago | parent

I'd like to see this data too. What report would you recommend?

wraptile 7 minutes ago | parent

It is a very hard time to do this sort of study with APIs and scraping not being available to the labs that would actually want to study this.

My guess would be that there will be a significant change detected but Russian troll farms are not totally datacenter operated - it's still mostly ran by real office workers like in 1984. That being said, you still need datacenter compute for organizing even manual operations like this.

asdf88990 9 minutes ago | parent

Russia is a pretty shithole in many ways but the posturing of people here in a post Snowden and Epstein world is something.

Yes, russia uses both farms and attempts to influence the public opinion, but guess what.

SXX 7 minutes ago | parent

I hope at least fellow IT people can recognize that "social media bots" are not running on Yandex datacenters neither they have IP adresses from Russia.

This is just not how social media botting works. If you try to "bot" facebook, instagram or any major social network via browser from datacenter IP let alone ones from Russia you'll soon get all your accounts banned.

Social media are botted via apps on mobile phones set in large farms; read: thousands of mobile devices. They either jailbroken or have some advance automation.

Neither they use Russian IP. Instead they go for residential proxies kindly provided by Israeli firms where bandwidth cost a leg, but it worth it. Or they just use their own botnets instead.