GoKawiilBusinesses that counted on the cloud's distributed nature to guarantee their data's availability have had a cold dose of reality during the past two weeks.
On Feb. 28, following military strikes by the US and Israel, Iran's Internet traffic fell to less than 1% across all major networks in the country, according to Cloudflare Radar, which tracks Internet traffic internationally. Within 24 hours, Iran responded, targeting infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and other Gulf States, hitting two Amazon Web Services' facilities in the UAE with drone strikes, while a third facility in Bahrain suffered "physical impacts to [its] infrastructure," Amazon Web Services stated March 2 on its AWS Health Dashboard.
"These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage," AWS stated. "We are working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts."
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While attacks against power infrastructure, industrial control system (ICS) networks, and transoceanic cables have occasionally occurred, direct attacks against data centers have been rare. The latest strikes are a recognition that the military, like most enterprises, relies on the cloud for operations, says Kathryn Raines, cyber threat intelligence team lead for the national security solutions team at threat intelligence provider Flashpoint.
"The physical strikes on facilities housing cloud infrastructure ... may seem like outliers, but the reality is that they’re likely the new blueprint for modern warfare," she says. "We're seeing reports of adversaries using a multi-domain approach — kinetic bombardments paired with claims of simultaneous cyberattacks on ICS networks by hacktivist proxies — with the intent to blind military targeting and paralyze the civilian economy."
'Modern Militaries ... Run on the Cloud'
The importance of the reported strikes on AWS facilities cannot be overstated, Raines says. Private infrastructure now runs military and government operations, turning hyper-scale cloud data centers into "Tier 1 strategic targets," she says.
"Modern militaries and governments run on the cloud ... [and] cloud architecture is built to survive bad weather, not war," she says, adding that many providers build backup data centers within 60 miles of the primary ones, making them just as easy to target as well.
"A blackout is an easy fix, but a missile strike causes fires, collapsed roofs, and water damage from emergency sprinklers that permanently destroy the hardware," Raines adds. "What's more, attackers don't even need to hit the servers — if they damage the physical cables connecting the building to the outside Internet, the data center is useless."
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