Russian missile strikes take out popular piracy websites

What happened

Over the last week, there have been reports that the Russian military has started targeting Ukraine's datacenters. The Russo-Ukrainian war has now formally extended to the digital realm.

Over the last week, there have been multiple reports that the Russian military has started targeting Ukraine's data centers (a building full of computers that runs online services). As one commenter put it, "DDoS (flooding a service with traffic until it stops responding) now means Direct Destruction of Servers."

Although the Western world didn't feel much of an impact, the situation is now changing, as popular pirate websites that host torrent trackers 1337x (aka Leet X) and NordicQuality experienced periods of explosion-induced downtime. 1337x has been fighting standard-issue DDoS attacks for months on end, and now it's experienced a Direct Destruction of Server attack, as several machines in its network were brought offline by kinetic blasts.

Key facts

• Over the last week, there have been — reports: that the Russian military has started targeting Ukraine's datacenters
• Over the last week, there have been multiple — reports: that the Russian military has started targeting Ukraine's data centers