Last updated on: 2026-03-09

Applicant Information

Full Legal Name: YANDEX LLC
Business URL: https://ya.ru
Primary Business Phone: +7 4957397000
Primary Business Email: hostmaster@yandex.net
Country Code of Location: RU
Application Information
Application Type DNS
Application Status Cleared
Technical Screening Status Cleared
RST Status Cleared
Application Questions
DNS.1.1.Third-Party Certificate
Does or will this RSP have a publicly verifiable, 3rd party certification (e.g. ISO 27001) held directly by the organization and relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.3.Physical Access Controls
Does or will this RSP have processes and controls to manage physical access to infrastructure and systems, including building access controls, security cameras and/or other sensors, physical environmental monitoring and safety equipment, and alarm systems related to the physical infrastructure?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.4.System Access Controls
Does or will this RSP have processes and controls to manage non-physical access to infrastructure, including network access from both internal systems and external Internet systems, intrusion detection systems, security information and event management systems, network firewalls, network segmentation and isolation, user identification and authentication, and authorization schemes?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.5.Vendor Management
Does or will this RSP have processes and controls pertaining to the selection of vendors and equipment suppliers, management and maintenance of assets while in use, procurement of assets, and safe disposal of assets?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.6.Cryptographic Material
Does or will this RSP routinely renew and keep safe all cryptographic material necessary for the operation of the RSP?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.7.Secure Data At-Rest
Does or will this RSP secure (e.g. encryption, tamper detection, etc…) at-rest data relevant to the operation of the RSP, including but not limited to DNSSEC if applicable?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.8.Secure Data In-Transit
Does or will this RSP secure (e.g. encryption, tamper detection, etc…) in-transit data relevant to the operation of the RSP, including but not limited to DNSSEC if applicable?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.9.Virtualization Controls
If applicable, does or will this RSP have security controls for data in virtualized environments, including controls relevant to both on-premises or private virtualization environments as well as public clouds, network isolation, memory isolation, process isolation, and hypervisor access controls?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.10.CISO
Does or will this RSP have a senior executive primarily in charge of and responsible for security?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.12.Background Checks
Does or will this RSP conduct background checks, both initial and on-going, of personnel and vendors relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.13.DDOS
Describe the solutions and mitigations to be used to thwart Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks against the authoritative DNS services.
Response
The first layer of protection is implemented on border routers (BR). BRs configured in accordance with the RFC2827 (BCP 38) thus protecting all our infrastructure (including authoritative NS) from ip-source spoofing based DDoS attacks. BRs also have an ACL capable to filter out traffic from distinct ip-addresses of prefixes recognized as a source of the attack. In-house developed monitoring system watch for a deviation in load patterns and detect malicious sources. The devices are managed through a separate management network, which does not depend on the state of the main network. ACL configured and deployed via in-house developed automation. OPS processes managed by a 24/7 duty shift. The second layer of protection is Load Balancers System (LBS). LBS consists of a hundreds servers with 2x100Gbit network interfaces capable to process traffic at a line rate with in-hose developed packet processing solution YANET (https://github.com/yanet-platform). Each load balancer server has a complicative firewall able to filter out packets by level 3 and 4 OSI headers and payload signature. Filtering by payload signature allow us to protect authoritative NS from DNS amplification attacks. Firewall rules deployed via in-house developed automation by a 24/7 duty shift. LBS distribute traffic over the “real” authoritative NS servers (RS – real server) based on a real-time availability and load metrics from each RS thus preventing overload of an any distinct RS. For a crucial services like DNS we plan capacity of RS level to manage 30-50x peaks from the baseline load without any degradation in SLA. Capacity of the RS level can be extended by autoscaling or manually by OPS team according to the current requirements. The third level of protection is in-house developed DNS-guard. DNS-guard is a fast and lightweighted eBPF program working in XDP context on a real authoritative NS servers. DNS-guard watch all incoming DNS traffic in real time and capable to apply request per second limits per source ip-address/prefix, request type or combination of both. DNS-guard protect NS server (powerdns) from over-capacity requests thus preventing DoS. DNS-guard limits configured by OPS team based on normal load model with peak extras. Configuration applies via in-house developed automation system by OPS team. PowerDNS server also has a build-in limitation features configured by OPS team based on normal load model with peak extras. In case of real emergency OPS team can activate DNS XDP offload on real authoritative NS servers. This solution based on developed in Yandex open souce code “YaDNS controller” (https://github.com/yandex/yadns-controller). Being enable, YaDNS controller increase the distinct server capacity for predefined requests by hundreds of times (see load testing results on github docs). All described systems covered by in-house developed monitoring and alerting software. Deviations from usual loads on any level (Border routers, LBS, RS) trigger an immediate alarms for 24/7 duty shift. The duty shift mitigates alarms according to runbooks using monitoring system to analyze root cause and automation to prepare and deploy necessary configuration. In case the root cause is not covered in runbooks duty shift escalates an alarm to OPS team.
DNS.1.14.BCP 38
Does or will this RSP comply with BCP 38?
Response
Yes
DNS.1.15.Secure Routing
Does or will this RSP implement routing security of some nature, such as automated route filters, RPKI route origin validation, or other operational practices defined by the Internet Society and Global Cyber Alliance's Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS)?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.2.Standard Hardware Maintenance
Does or will this RSP have documented, regular, and active practices for the maintenance of hardware relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.3.Standard Software Maintenance
Does or will this RSP have documented, regular, and active practices for the maintenance, upgrading, and patching of software relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.4.Standard Hardware Lifecycle
Does or will this RSP have documented, regular, and active practices for the lifecycle of hardware relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.5.Secure Software Development
Does or will this RSP have documented, regular, and active practices for the secure development of software?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.6.Hardware Maintenance Contingency
Does or will this RSP have documented contingency plans for extraordinary scenarios regarding the maintenance of hardware relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.7.Software Maintenance Contingency
Does or will this RSP have documented contingency plans for extraordinary scenarios regarding the maintenance, upgrading, and patching of software relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.8.Hardware Lifecycle Contingency
Does or will this RSP have documented contingency plans for extraordinary scenarios regarding the lifecycle of hardware relevant to the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.9.Software Development Contingency
Does or will this RSP have documented contingency plans for extraordinary scenarios regarding the development of software?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.10.IaC
Does or will this RSP use Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) to manage all systems relevant to operation of the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.2.11.Automated Orchestration
Does or will this RSP use automated orchestration to manage all systems relevant to the operation of the registry services under application?
Response
Yes
DNS.3.3.DNS Resiliency
Describe the methods resiliency for DNS, including the use of anycast, primary and secondary DNS authoritative servers, and hidden DNS zone transfer servers.
Response
DNS resiliency is achieved by distributing stateless and equal workload nodes across different data centers, ensuring there is no single point of failure. DNS queries are routed through L3/L4 anycast load balancers, which provide high availability by using routing protocols for redundancy. Changes to DNS zones are first made on distributed hidden master servers, where data is stored both locally and in a distributed database. Updates are then distributed to the authoritative primary and secondary DNS servers using the standard DNS NOTIFY and XFR mechanisms, ensuring that all authoritative servers have the latest information.
Attachments
DNS.3.4.DNS Zone Distribution Data Center
Does or will this RSP have at least two Tier III (as defined here: https://uptimeinstitute.com/tiers) or equivalent data centers having no inter-dependencies for DNS zone distribution?
Response
Yes
Attachments
DNS.3.5.Anycast Data Center
Does or will this RSP have at least two Tier III or equivalent data centers having no inter-dependencies for global DNS anycast service?
Response
Yes
Attachments
DNS.4.3.DNS Failure
Does or will this RSP have enough coverage of DNS service to accommodate failures of any DNS point-of-presence to maintain minimum Service Level Requirements?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.2.RFC 1034
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 1034 (“DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.3.RFC 1035
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 1035 (“DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.4.RFC 1123
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 1123 (“Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.5.RFC 1982
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 1982 (“Serial Number Arithmetic”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.6.RFC 2181
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 2181 (“Clarifications to the DNS Specification”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.7.RFC 3226
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 3226 (“DNSSEC and IPv6 A6 aware server/resolver message size requirements”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.8.RFC 3596
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 3596 (“DNS Extensions to Support IP Version 6”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.9.RFC 3597
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 3597 (“Handling of Unknown DNS Resource Record (RR) Types”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.10.RFC 4343
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 4343 (“Domain Name System (DNS) Case Insensitivity Clarification”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.11.RFC 6891
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 6891 (“Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS(0)))”?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.12.RFC 7766
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 7766 (“DNS Transport over TCP - Implementation Requirements”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.13.RFC 5001
Does or will this RSP implement RFC 5001 (“DNS Name Server Identifier (NSID) Option”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.14.RFC 6168
Does or will this RSP operate DNS service according to RFC 6168 (“Requirements for Management of Name Servers for the DNS”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.15.RFC 8906
Does or will this RSP operate DNS service according to RFC 8906 (“A Common Operational Problem in DNS Servers: Failure to Communicate”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.16.RFC 9199
Does or will this RSP operate DNS service according to RFC 9199 (“Considerations for Large Authoritative DNS Server Operators”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.17.RFC 9210
Does or will this RSP operate DNS service according to RFC 9210 (“DNS Transport over TCP - Operational Requirements”)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.18.DNS Performance
Does or will this RSP meet the standards established in the Service Level Agreements defined in Specification 10 of the ICANN Registry Agreement (version 2024) with regard to DNS?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.19.DNS Virtualization
Does or will this RSP compartmentalize (e.g. virtualization) the DNS service in such a manner that each compartment (e.g. containers, virtual machines, physical machines) is dedicated to DNS (excluding system services such as monitoring, remote access and NTP)?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.21.Individual Node Monitoring
Does or will this RSP monitor all unique DNS servers of all anycast nodes?
Response
Yes
DNS.5.22.IANA Compliance
Does or will this RSP operate authoritative DNS servers according to the IANA Technical Requirements for Authoritative Name Servers (https://www.iana.org/help/nameserver-requirements)?
Response
Yes
DNS.6.3.IPv4 Performance
Does or will this RSP meet the standards established in Specification 10 of the ICANN Registry Agreement (version 2024) with regard to DNS and IPv4?
Response
Yes
DNS.6.4.IPv6 Performance
Does or will this RSP meet the standards established in Specification 10 of the ICANN Registry Agreement (version 2024) with regard to DNS and IPv6?
Response
Yes
DNS.7.1.DNS Service Continuity Exercise
Does or will this RSP regularly exercise DNS Service continuity actions?
Response
Yes
DNS.7.3.Transfer of Operations
Does or will this RSP be capable of transferring all applicable operations to another RSP as defined by the Material Subcontracting Arrangement Technical Questions?
Response
Yes
DNS.7.4.EBERO
Does or will this RSP participate in coordinated Emergency Back-end Registry Operator (EBERO) transitions, including but not limited to maintaining the DNSSEC chain of trust, of hosted gTLDs when the business relationship of this RSP and the Registry Operator is not in good standing?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.1.Internal Monitoring
Does or will this RSP monitor for faults inside its own network?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.2.External Monitoring
Does or will this RSP monitor for faults from a point outside any of its own networks?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.3.Fault Triage
Does or will this RSP have documented processes for aggregation and triage of faults?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.4.Fault Mitigation
Does or will this RSP have documented processes to mitigate faults once detected?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.6.Fault Minimization
Does or will this RSP have processes to minimize faults during maintenance of systems, including both automated processes and manual change control processes?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.7.On-call Staff
Does or will this RSP have personnel capable of reacting to and mitigating faults 24 hours per day of every day of every year of service?
Response
Yes
DNS.8.8.Service Disruptions
Provide documentation regarding any RSP functions currently being served for any gTLD, the domain names of the gTLDs, and all service disruptions for each gTLD in the past six months, where a service disruption is defined by Specification 10 of the ICANN Registry Agreement (2024).
Response
Not applicable, this is our first TLD certification. We currently do not provide services to any TLD.