Russia experiences a large-scale disruption of Internet services after an attack on the Sberbank data center

Russia has experienced a massive outage of banking applications, mobile operators, and internet services after a drone attack on a Sberbank data center in the city of Balakovo, Saratov region.

This is reported by The Moscow Times.

According to the DownDetector and Sboy.rf services, users began to complain en masse about problems with the operation of Sberbank, its GigaChat neural network, and the Samokat food delivery service. In particular, the latter’s customers were unable to place orders.

The outages also affected mobile operators MTS, Megafon, and T2, Rostelecom, hosting provider Reg.ru, and business service Kontur.

In addition, users reported problems with online banking at Tochka Bank, Alfa Bank, VTB, and Rosselkhozbank.

Complaints were also received about the work of Mail.ru, VK, the Ozon marketplace, the Avito classifieds service, and the Russian government services portal Gosuslugi.

At the same time, Sberbank’s First Deputy Chairman of the Board, Alexander Vedyakhin, confirmed the attack on the data center, but assured that all the bank’s systems are operating normally. According to him, none of the employees were injured.

Amid reports of an attack, Sberbank shares lost almost 0.7% of their value.

The data center in Balakovo itself is still under construction, although some of its capacity is already in use. In the future, it should become one of the largest data centers in Russia. It is also planned to host the services of the state digital platform “DerzhTech”.

The cost of the project is estimated at 122.2 billion rubles.

As a reminder, the Ukrainian Defense Forces attacked Moscow and the Moscow region with almost 500 drones . Digital and industrial infrastructure facilities in the Saratov region of the Russian Federation were also hit, including the Sberbank data center and a metallurgical plant in Balakovo.