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Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

wikileaks.org

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Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#91

Post by QuinnyPig »

cafard wrote: post #84
QuinnyPig wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why Russian intelligence cares about AWS datacenter locations. This has largely been an "open secret" for a long time. If you want to know where an AWS datacenter is, ask local taxi drivers and pizza delivery folks. These things are huge, and very hard to hide.

Which assumes that you know the locale. I imagine that there is one in Ashburn, Virginia, maybe an hour's drive from here. But what pizza delivery operation would I ask? I guess I could hail a cab at Dulles and ask to be taken there.

The locale is "the region as announced publicly," and anyone who's in a position to use this information is going to pay more than one person to start digging. It's a crowdsourcing problem.

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#92

Post by sctb »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #21
mey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WikiLeaks may not have the mission statement you think it does.

Insert some bullshit about working with Russia, bla, bla, bla, China, Iran, any country the U.S. doesn't like? If so, I don't think that's it, as much as the DNC would like to detract from conspiring against Sanders. WikiLeaks does have biases, sure, like Assange not liking Clinton, since she called for his droning, however if you actually read more about WikiLeaks than the surface reports, it is simply that they bel…

If someone posts trolls by you with political bait, please don't bite!

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#93

Post by halbritt »

rconti wrote: post #53
halbritt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the ones in the Bay Area are, to my knowledge relatively small "retail" colo spaces. 200 Paul, 528 Bryant is PAIX, 11 Great Oaks is Equinix. SV2 got shut down years ago. I don't remember AWS ever being in 3000 Corvin, which is a tiny, poorly powered data center. As an example of how old this data is, I reported to someone in 2014 time frame that led data center operations for some AWS regions including North…

I thought the datacenters on Corvin were newer; I've spent a lot of time at the Walsh Ave ones next to Nvidia and Corvin stuff looked new.

I just checked and you are correct. I guess they probably leveled the old building, which was 3030 Corvin. Anyone that was there in the mid 2000s remembers when Facebook heated the place up and they had box fans every where, an extra generator parked in the parking lot, etc.

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#95

Post by mvanbaak »

irrational wrote: post #90
morpheuskafka wrote: post #6

How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not. Sure, it's fun to…

From what I've seen Wikileaks releases all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with the things you mentioned. As for the AWS information, I'd be hesitant to have my data hosted at the one in Oregon, it's right next to a bombing range! One bombing mishap...

If you follow the AWS best practices you have nothing to worry. Hint: use multiple availability zones and regions

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#96

Post by mvanbaak »

This release shows how desperate wikileaks is. Very old and outdated data that is far from secret. We should all simply ignore them nowedays, thank them for what they did in the past and tell them to move on. The only reason I see why they published is: get some new media attention because tomorrow they might get a contract with Y who we dont like blabla.

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#97

Post by bogomipz »

saalweachter wrote: post #26
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess the goal is more to keep this list from coming up in public records searches than to serve as a truly effective disguise. I can't imagine the datacenter employees are expected to lie to everyone about where they work.

Which reminds me of the article on HN a few months/years back about how you could identify most spies because they all appeared the same way in embassy listings (which was all public information). With a lot of things like this, you're really squatting at a particular point in the effort-reward curve. You're not going to make something of this scale absolutely secret; there are hundreds of people involved, deliveries…

>"Which reminds me of the article on HN a few months/years back about how you could identify most spies because they all appeared the same way in embassy listings (which was all public information)."

Might you have a link to this post?

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#98

Post by [deleted] »

drharby wrote: post #55
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is somewhat humorous you would assume a determined attacker would be apprehended, or dissuaded by jail time. Poor threat modeling. It's difficult enough to defend against wild backhoes.

You give actors too much credit

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#99

Post by walrus01 »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #6

How come WikiLeaks is distributing this? I don't see any meaningful connection to government transparency or even corporate transparency... this has nothing to do with abuse of power, it is completely normal and rightful for a company to keep its infrastructure locations secret. Some of this could be found through public records, etc. and that fine to post, but internal operating procedures are not. Sure, it's fun to…

It's not like you can hide a datacenter from aerial photos or space based photography. Giant air handling units and 1 megawatt+ sized generators are huge. You could theoretically camouflage one, but they're built in a cost-sensitive manner, it would cost millions to actually "hide" a datacenter from IMINT techniques.

Re: Amazon Atlas: The “Highly Confidential” locations of Amazon's data centers

#100

Post by tssva »

neurobashing wrote: post #40

As a resident of Ashburn, VA the locations are hardly a secret. Just about everyone in the area who cares to know, knows. I drive past the place in the header image of https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/amazo... on the way home from the Sterling Wal-Mart. My next door neighbor is an HVAC tech for Amazon, and he's only barely secretive about where they are (to me anyway). Everyone at Old Ox and Cro…

Also an Ashburn resident and I agree. There isn't a much worse kept secret.
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