Ukrainian Drones Attacked Sberbank's Major Data Center in Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast Governor Roman Busargin reported a drone attack on the region on the morning of October 14. According to him, several residential buildings were damaged in Balakovo, and one person died. Local residents reported dozens of explosions.

The Ukrainian arms manufacturer Fire Point initially stated that this strike targeted Sberbank's data center. The Russian publication "Agentstvo", after analyzing the geolocation of the published photographs, also concluded that a damaged data center was visible in them, and soon the bank itself acknowledged the attack.

Sberbank, however, stated that its systems and services were allegedly operating normally. They claimed there were no issues with banking operations. However, according to DownDetector data, this did not entirely correspond to reality.

Russian users began massively complaining about problems with the operation of websites and services. Among them were Mail.ru, "Tochka Bank", Yandex services, the "Kontur" program, and the Ozon marketplace. People could not load pages, log into personal accounts, send emails, or make payments. Official reasons for the failure were not reported.

The data center in Balakovo is still under construction, but according to monitoring channels, some of its parts might have already been operational. The project cost exceeds one billion dollars. The center is designed for almost three thousand server racks, up to 120 thousand servers, and an electrical capacity of up to 82 MW.

It is known that Sberbank's data center in Balakovo began urgently purchasing air defense systems shortly before the attack, writes the publication "Vazhnye Istorii" (Important Stories). The company "InfoTech Balakovo", which is engaged in its construction and operation, has placed orders for electronic warfare systems, personal protective equipment, firefighting equipment, and anti-aircraft weapons since August.

The most significant orders were placed on an urgent basis on October 5 — two days before the AFU strikes on Yandex data centers and nine days before the attack on Sberbank's data center itself in Balakovo.

From October 8 to 11, drones damaged three out of five Yandex data centers — in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, Kaluga, and Vladimir Oblast. After this, users reported problems with Yandex Pay, Yandex Go, maps, search, the "Alice" voice assistant, and the Yandex Cloud platform, which is used by other organizations.

Disruptions were also felt in Belarus. Specifically, problems arose with the operation of Yandex.Taxi, and some users could not access files on Yandex.Disk.

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