Iran Strikes On Amazon Data Centers Caused Permanent Loss of Customer Data (arstechnica.com)
(Thursday September 17, 2026 @04:34PM (EditorDavid)
from the other-people's-servers dept.)
- Reference: 0185677296
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/17/0619253/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/
[1] Ars Technica reports :
> Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
>
> Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an [2]AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first [3]reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers. Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three [4]AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone.
>
> Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers. The company is still working on "recovering regional resources" and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates... But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there. "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," the AWS update said.
>
> The company had already suspended customer billing in the affected AWS regions in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and has [5]spent the past six months attempting to restore normal operations... [When the war began] AWS immediately urged customers to migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore any "inaccessible resources." The cloud service also reportedly issued [6]$150 million in customer credits following the initial Iranian strikes in March.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/
[2] https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/amazons-aws-is-unable-restore-access-bahrain-one-uae-cloud-data-zone-after-war-2026-09-15/
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-infrastructure/latest/regions/aws-availability-zones.html
[5] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/amazon-stuck-with-months-of-repairs-after-drone-strikes-on-data-centers/
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/04/21/ai-data-centers-are-now-big-geopolitical-risk-securing-them-against-iran-attackers-drones-business/
> Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
>
> Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an [2]AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first [3]reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers. Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three [4]AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone.
>
> Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers. The company is still working on "recovering regional resources" and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates... But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there. "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," the AWS update said.
>
> The company had already suspended customer billing in the affected AWS regions in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and has [5]spent the past six months attempting to restore normal operations... [When the war began] AWS immediately urged customers to migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore any "inaccessible resources." The cloud service also reportedly issued [6]$150 million in customer credits following the initial Iranian strikes in March.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/iran-strikes-on-amazon-data-centers-caused-permanent-loss-of-customer-data/
[2] https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status
[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/amazons-aws-is-unable-restore-access-bahrain-one-uae-cloud-data-zone-after-war-2026-09-15/
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-infrastructure/latest/regions/aws-availability-zones.html
[5] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/amazon-stuck-with-months-of-repairs-after-drone-strikes-on-data-centers/
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/04/21/ai-data-centers-are-now-big-geopolitical-risk-securing-them-against-iran-attackers-drones-business/
Cloudy with a chance of boom (Score:2)
by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
The data went from being in the cloud to being in the clouds
And? (Score:2)
by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
Maybe it's a benefit if Amazon suddenly lost some data related to me.
Backups? (Score:1)
by Steven_M_Campbell ( 409802 )
Backups? You did the backups right?
How utterly unimpressive that is for a 'data center'.
Re: (Score:2)
by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
Steve, the crowd is magic. You don't get it.
Just kidding, you're just renting 1 server except you don't know where it is and have no control over it.
We all knew the truth (Score:2, Funny)
by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
"It's the cloud! It's everywhere! It's distributed!" - dumb people who use AWS
"Yeah, it's on like one server. Pay us more money lol" - Amazon.
I'm still wondering (Score:1)
How is the world better off now than it was before this war started?
Re: I'm still wondering (Score:2)
Well, Trump says it is, so it must be. He _never_ lies or makes stuff up... /s
Re: (Score:1)
The high cost of fuel is creating higher demand for electric vehicles.
Re: (Score:2)
> How is the world better off now than it was before this war started?
You ask that as if our beloved leaders' intention were to create a better world.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh it's created a better world....for them.
I sure hope they got my data! (Score:2)
No such luck, however
Re:I'm still wondering (Score:5, Informative)
You'll notice we "liberated" Venezuela's oil reserves for absolutely no goddamned reason, shortly before we started a war with Iran for absolutely no goddamned reason.
Those two seemingly random instances of the US Executive merely being woefully incompetent make the real reason pretty clear. And in case we needed any more evidence, crude is still over $100/bbl.
Re:I'm still wondering (Score:4, Interesting)
> You'll notice we "liberated" Venezuela's oil reserves for absolutely no goddamned reason, shortly before we started a war with Iran for absolutely no goddamned reason.
Unfortunately, the reason for Trump doing what he did was simply that he could. He had the power to do something that no one else in the world could do, so he did it to show that he could do something that no one else could do. The great irony is that Trump is consumed with his appearance and yet his actions make him look bad. The only reason he doesn't recognize the obviousness of the badness is that he has surrounded himself with yes-men and carpetbaggers that inflate his already enormous lack of awareness.
Re: (Score:2)
> You'll notice we "liberated" Venezuela's oil reserves for absolutely no goddamned reason, shortly before we started a war with Iran for absolutely no goddamned reason.
No, that's not true. The reason Trump went to war with Iran was to distract everyone from the Epstein files, which were gaining serious news cycle coverage at the time. ...and the Epstein files are like an iceberg. We still don't know how big they are yet, but we keep discovering more serious stuff.
Re: (Score:1)
People ranted about the Epstein files during the Biden administration, now politically opposite people are ranting about the Epstein files during the trump administration.
The Epstein files are a combination of Hitler, Bigfoot, the Moon Landing conspiracy theory and Pedophilia all wrapped up into one giant excuse for everything someone currently thinks is wrong. It's like cooties for adults.
"Hey, you, you've got [epstein files]! Ewwwww"
Don Trump, Negative growth proponent (Score:2, Interesting)
A number of countries have accelerated their clean energy transition. Unless you're a coal magnate, delusional or a Xitter troll, that is excellent news.
It also is accelerating the move away from the dollar as the world reserve currency. This is not good news for Usians, is neutral for some, and very positive for some others, so one's outlook on this may vary.
Basically, if you can get Stumpy McDipshit to believe his ego is wrapped up in something, there's a very good chance you can get him to kill it, lik
Re: (Score:2)
Well we can quit spending all that money on military bases in the Middle East, because they're no longer feasible to maintain.
Nope, that's not going to happen. What will happen is we funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into defense contractors pockets to solve the problem, which they don't.
Re: (Score:2)
some not at all negligible part of the world is substantially better off.
there is no question that this war falls squarely on trump. however, it has been brewing for decades. he's just the buffoon who pulled the trigger and is going to take full blame. but many, many other reptiles are really to blame. if for some reason you want to blame potuses only, those glorified stewards, you can blame every single one since pretty much eisenhower, possibly with the exception of jfk. but you will still be missing a lo