# Yandex outage: Data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots went on the move

> **Key Architectural Takeaway:** Following reported strikes on Yandex data centers, claims circulated on the Internet that Russian bot farms and influence operations had been knocked offline.

**Published:** 2026-10-14T20:24:19+00:00 
**Source:** Cloudflare Technical Blog 
**Category:** software-engineering 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/yandex-outage-data-shows-that-instead-of-going-dark-maliciou.html 

## Executive Summary
Following reported strikes on Yandex data centers, claims circulated on the Internet that Russian bot farms and influence operations had been knocked offline. HTTP traffic charts showed steep drops, fueling speculation that the infrastructure damage had stopped these malicious actors. However, aggregate traffic metrics can easily mislead. There are two autonomous system numbers ( ASNs ) associated with Yandex: AS13238 is used by Yandex’s search engine, while AS200350 runs its cloud services.

## Architectural & Systems Analysis
From a gaming catalog, platform economics, and Proton runtime perspective, game promotions on Steam directly impact Linux gaming adoption metrics. Key observations:

- **Steam Deck Compatibility & Verification:** Discounted titles should be evaluated against Valve's 'Deck Verified' tiering (anti-cheat compatibility, resolution scaling at 800p, and controller glyph support).
- **Shader Pre-caching Efficiency:** Valve's automated pipeline compiles and distributes Vulkan pipelines ahead of time, mitigating run-time stutter on AMD RDNA architectures without taxing device battery.
- **DRM & Anti-Cheat Friction:** Third-party launcher overhead (e.g. 2K Launcher, EA App) remains the primary friction point; community launch scripts (Proton-GE, Protontricks) provide workarounds to bypass non-standard wrappers.

## Impact on the Open Ecosystem
For Linux and Steam Deck gamers, catalog promotions serve as a benchmark for Linux market share growth. High community demand forces publishers to ensure day-one compatibility with open runtime layers.