On
October 11, 2018, WikiLeaks published a "Highly Confidential"
internal document from the cloud computing provider Amazon. The
document from late 2015 lists the addresses and some operational
details of over one hundred data centers spread across fifteen cities
in nine countries. To accompany this document, WikiLeaks also created
a map showing where Amazon's data centers are located.
Amazon,
which is the largest cloud provider, is notoriously secretive about
the precise locations of its data centers. While a few are publicly
tied to Amazon, this is the exception rather than the norm. More
often, Amazon operates out of data centers owned by other companies
with little indication that Amazon itself is based there too or runs
its own data centers under less-identifiable subsidiaries such as
VaData, Inc. In some cases, Amazon uses pseudonyms to obscure its
presence. For example, at its IAD77 data center, the document states
that “Amazon is known as ‘Vandalay Industries’ on badges and
all correspondence with building manager”.
Amazon
is the leading cloud provider for the United States intelligence
community. In 2013, Amazon entered into a $600 million contract with
the CIA to build a cloud for use by intelligence agencies working
with information classified as Top Secret. Then, in 2017, Amazon
announced the AWS Secret Region, which allows storage of data
classified up to the Secret level by a broader range of agencies and
companies. Amazon also operates a special GovCloud region for US
Government agencies hosting unclassified information.
Currently,
Amazon is one of the leading contenders for an up to $10 billion
contract to build a private cloud for the Department of Defense.
Amazon is one of the only companies with the certifications required
to host classified data in the cloud. The Defense Department is
looking for a single provider and other companies, including Oracle
and IBM, have complained that the requirements unfairly favor Amazon.
While
one of the benefits of the cloud is the potential to increase
reliability through geographic distribution of computing resources,
cloud infrastructure is remarkably centralised in terms of legal
control. Just a few companies and their subsidiaries run the
majority of cloud computing infrastructure around the world. Of
these, Amazon is the largest by far, with recent market research
showing that Amazon accounts for 34% of the cloud infrastructure
services market.
Until
now, this cloud infrastructure controlled by Amazon was largely
hidden, with only the general geographic regions of the data centers
publicised. While Amazon’s cloud is comprised of physical
locations, indications of the existence of these places are primarily
buried in government records or made visible only when cloud
infrastructure fails due to natural disasters or other problems in
the physical world.
In the
process of dispelling the mystery around the locations of Amazon’s
data centers, WikiLeaks also turned this document into a puzzle game,
the Quest of Random Clues. The goal of this game was to
encourage people to research these data centers in a fun and
intriguing way, while highlighting related issues such as contracts
with the intelligence community, Amazon’s complex corporate
structures, and the physicality of the cloud.
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