Iranian news service claims drone strikes on AWS were deliberate, to probe for US datacenter dependencies
Iranian publisher Fars News Agency, which is aligned with the country’s government, has claimed the drone strikes on Amazon Web Services’ Middle East datacenters were deliberate and had strategic significance.
In a Telegram post that The Register translated from Farsi to English using Google Translate and Bing Translate, the Fars News Agency claimed Iran sent drones to attack Amazon’s datacenter in Bahrain, “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy's military and intelligence activities.”
“The attacks are part of the IRGC's recent operations against Amazon data centres in Dubai and other strategic centres in the region,” the post adds, before concluding “Amazon and Microsoft in these operations has dealt a serious blow to the enemy's technological and information infrastructure.”
Activities that probe an enemy’s weaknesses during armed conflict are unremarkable. The notion that datacenters are critical infrastructure and therefore worthy targets during combat is also not new.
Spreading falsehoods and propaganda during conflict is also a very common tactic, and with much of Iran’s internet currently offline, Telegram could offer the nation’s government one of the few ways to get its message across borders. Indeed, the news agency has shared a story about the attack on AWS on its X account, but The Register has been unable to reach the advertised URL directly, or when using VPNs that operate nodes in nations friendly to Iran. Fars News Agency can therefore get a Xeet out of Iran, but not a story.
The news agency’s mention of an attack on Microsoft, which has not reported an attack on its datacenters in the middle east or any disruption to services, therefore deserves to be viewed through a wartime lens.
The Iranian outlet’s account does, however, reflect Amazon’s account of events, which states a drone strike near its Bahrain datacenter caused problems, while its Dubai facilities were “directly struck” by drones.
The posts also include other details that AWS has revealed in public, such as its efforts to restore services and recommendations that its customers shift workloads to other regions.
The post’s claim of “a serious blow to the enemy's technological and information infrastructure” is also hard to sustain. ®
