Drone strikes have damaged AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing significant service outages due to structural, power, and water damage. Amazon is restoring infrastructure and advising customers to use disaster recovery plans and migrate workloads to unaffected regions. The incident is linked to the broader Middle East conflict, with warnings of increased cyberattack risks. The main topics covered are the physical attack on cloud infrastructure, the ongoing recovery efforts, and the broader geopolitical context.
Amazon has confirmed that three Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one in Bahrain have been damaged by drone strikes, causing an extensive outage that is still affecting dozens of cloud computing services.
While the company didn't provide further details on the incident, the attacks are likely part of Iran's response to U.S. (Operation Epic Fury) and Israeli (Operation Roaring Lion) strikes in Iran over the weekend.
Amazon said the drone strikes have disrupted AWS Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-CENTRAL-1) and the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region (ME-SOUTH-1).
"Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes. In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure," the company said in a status page update on Monday, 4:19 PM PST.
"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. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts."
At the moment, three availability zones (mec1-az2 and mec1-az3) in the UAE remain "significantly impaired," while a third (mes1-az2) in Bahrain is still affected by a "localized power issue."
Amazon is now restoring physical infrastructure, while also working on "multiple software-based recovery paths" that don't require "underlying facilities being fully brought back online." The company is also prioritizing restoring services and tools that would allow customers to back up and migrate data and applications out of the impacted regions.
Amazon also advised impacted customers to back up their data and migrate workloads to AWS regions unaffected by these issues.
"We recommend customers exercise their disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups stored in other regions, and update their applications to direct traffic away from the affected regions," Amazon added. "For customers requiring guidance on alternate regions, we recommend considering AWS Regions in the United States, Europe, or Asia Pacific, as appropriate for your latency and data residency requirements."
On Monday, the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) also warned British organizations of a heightened risk of Iranian cyberattacks amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
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