The VK press service has confirmed an attack by unmanned aerial vehicles on a data center owned by the company, located in Leningrad Oblast. The incident occurred on the night of Sunday, October 18, during a massive UAV strike against Saint Petersburg and the surrounding region. The company emphasized that all VK services remain available to users as usual, while details regarding the damage to the data center and the condition of the server equipment were not disclosed at the time of publication. It remains unknown whether the server building complex itself was directly hit or if the drones crashed in the surrounding area.
Massive Attack on the Northwest
According to regional authorities, on the night of October 18, Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast were subjected to a large-scale drone attack, which air defense forces repelled for several hours. The Governor of Saint Petersburg reported that Emergencies Ministry forces were extinguishing fires at civil infrastructure facilities in the Nevsky, Krasnoselsky, and Krasnogvardeisky districts, as well as at the territory of the Saint Petersburg Oil Terminal. The Ozon logistics center in Saint Petersburg was also hit, and emergency services worked at the scene. Reports indicated damage to residential buildings and cars. According to various reports, between 126 and 130 drones were shot down in the region.
Series of Strikes on Data Centers: From Yandex to Sberbank
The attack on VK's infrastructure is part of a series of incidents involving IT infrastructure facilities in Russia in recent days. Previously, Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, as well as facilities in Kaluga and Vladimir, were targeted by UAV strikes, disrupting the operation of Yandex services and its clients. The company offered customers the option to reserve capacity in partner clouds, including VK Cloud, Selectel, and K2Cloud, and waived fees for Yandex Cloud services until the end of October. On October 14, information emerged regarding an attack on a Sberbank data center, which, according to the company, continued to operate normally.
State Discusses Protection of Critical Infrastructure
Against the backdrop of recurring drone attacks on Russian data centers, the Ministry of Digital Development, together with the Russian Ministry of Defense, has begun developing measures to protect against such incidents. According to the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, "the issue of covering these facilities is being resolved." Valery Ermakov, Deputy President and Chairman of the Management Board of PJSC Rostelecom, stated that Russia will need so-called "Doomsday data centers" that allow service providers to quickly restore operations under the current conditions.
What Is Known About the Consequences
At present, VK has confirmed the fact of the attack on its data center but has not published details on the scale of the damage. The company assured users that they are not experiencing restrictions in accessing services. For the industry, the incident has served as another signal of the need to revise placement and protection schemes for computing power, as well as the growing role of geographic diversification and backup cloud contours amid ongoing attacks on infrastructure.
