How do attacks on data centres affect internet services?

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1. 1

   Did my app just crash? A case study of the Kakao superapp disruption event

   Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning (Hefley et al.)Published Mar 1, 2024Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “Superapps (ie apps that integrate the features of multiple applications for a more convenient user experience) have become pervasive among Internet users. This case study examines a recent disruption to one such application: KakaoTalk - the most widely used messaging application in South Korea. Specifically, the case study examines a fire incident at the SK C&C data centre, which caused an extended outage for one of South Korea's leading tech companies - Kakao Corp. The review of this event reveals how ineffective disaster readiness resulted in inadequate fire response, leading to serious ripple effects across the data centre. During the outage, cyber-security threats rose. As a result of these disruptions, Kakao users turned to competitor apps, resulting in changing market dynamics. This case study highlights the unforeseen costs and socio-economic influences caused by such interruptions, highlighting the importance of holistic risk management strategies.”

2. 2

   Ukraine strikes Yandex data centre in third attack on Russian tech giant

   BBC NewsPublished Oct 11, 2026Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “It is the third time this week that Ukraine has targeted Russian tech giant Yandex, forcing the company to suspend its operations.”

3. 3

   Advancing the Art of Internet Edge Outage Detection

   Internet Measurement Conference (Richter et al.)Published Oct 31, 2018Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “Measuring reliability of edge networks in the Internet is difficult due to the size and heterogeneity of networks, the rarity of outages, and the difficulty of finding vantage points that can accurately capture such events at scale. In this paper, we use logs from a major CDN, detailing hourly request counts from address blocks. We discovered that in many edge address blocks, devices, collectively, contact the CDN every hour over weeks and months. We establish that a sudden temporary absence of these requests indicates a loss of Internet connectivity of those address blocks, events we call disruptions.”

4. 4

   Modelling Cascading Failure in Complex CPSS to Inform Resilient Mission Assurance: An Intelligent Transport System Case Study.

   Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) (Sobb & Turnbull)Published Jul 25, 2025Checked Oct 12, 2026

   “They represent unique opportunities but also have potential threats to system operation and correctness. The emergent behaviour in Complex Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (C-CPSSs), caused by events such as cyber-attacks and network outages, have the potential to have devastating effects to critical services across society. It is therefore imperative that the risk of cascading failure is minimised through the fortifying of these systems of systems to achieve resilient mission assurance. This work designs and implements a programmatic model to validate the value of cascading failure simulation and analysis, which is then tested against a C-CPSS intelligent transport system scenario. Results from the model and its implementations highlight the value in identifying both critical nodes and percolation of consequences during a cyber failure, in addition to the importance of including social nodes in models for accurate simulation results. Understanding the relationships between cyber, physical, and social nodes is key to understanding systems' failures that occur because of or that involve cyber systems, in order to achieve cyber and system resilience.”