Russian Courts Begin Canceling Hearings En Masse Due to Yandex Outage Following Attacks on Data Centers

Russian Courts Begin Canceling Hearings En Masse Due to Yandex Outage Following Attacks on Data Centers

Attacks on Yandex data centers caused a widespread outage in Russia’s commercial courts, disrupting dozens of hearings, Verstka found.

Courts began canceling hearings on October 8, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck the company’s data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Region. According to court orders, the cancellations were caused by “technical problems” affecting the Electronic Justice services.

The problem was caused by a “widespread outage” at Yandex Cloud’s main data center, according to letters the courts received from PravoTech, the company that maintains the commercial courts’ electronic system.

Because of the outage, courts were unable to hold previously scheduled online hearings by videoconference. There were also “difficulties” with audio and video recordings of hearings, as well as with uploading and viewing documents in the My Arbiter system.

As a result, from October 8 through 14, courts were forced to issue orders postponing hearings or declaring recesses. In some cases, courts also declined to proceed with parties’ applications until deficiencies were remedied.

For example, on October 14, the Commercial Court of the Kemerovo Region, citing “damage to Yandex’s critical infrastructure,” declined to consider Sberbank’s application in a local woman’s bankruptcy case.

“The court draws the applicant’s attention to the fact that none of the documents attached to the application can be loaded, and therefore the court has no technical ability to review these attachments,” the decision said.

On October 12, the Commercial Court of Tuva was unable to hold an online hearing due to “connection failures.” The hearing was ultimately postponed until October 16.

Judging by the data reviewed by Verstka, the outage affected several regions in different parts of the country. In addition to those mentioned above, they included the Sverdlovsk, Smolensk, Tula, Kostroma, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl regions, Altai Territory, the Volga District, and others.

Apparently, the problem had not been fully resolved by October 16. When users visited the commercial courts’ website, they were shown a warning about “difficulties with the operation of services.” Verstka’s correspondent periodically could not open case files or load decision documents.

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