A network of over 100 secretive data centers controlled by Amazon are reveled.
Continuing their theme of exposing the governments takeover of the internet, today Wikileaks published a new set of leaks documents from Amazon outlining the online retail giants global dominance in cloud storage solutions, and their close ties to the US government.
Before we take a look at Amazon Atlas, lets first cover the remaining 2 clues. An hour or so before they released these documents, Wikileaks put out 2 final clues hinting to what this new publication would contain. First they thanked everyone for taking part in solving the clues that lead to the release by tweeting a picture of a cloud.
This was followed by 2 gifs. both were anagrams of the hashtags Wikileaks used during the puzzle quest. The first hashtag MythicAirplanes changes to ThemiscyraPlain. Themiscyra is the name of of the mythical home of the Amazons.
Themiscyra (/ˌθɛmɪˈskɪrə/; Greek: Θεμίσκυρα Themiskyra) was an ancient Greek town on the Themiscyra plain north of Pontus and a little distance from the coast and near the mouth of the Thermodon (modern Terme River). It was, in legend, the home of the Amazons.
The second anagram changes thew hashtag QuestOfRandomClues to NamerOfCloudsQuest. This was a reference to Luke Howard. Howard is also known as 'The Namer of Clouds'.
Clues that were hidden in plain sight right from the beginning pointed us to Amazon and Cloud.
AMAZON ATLAS
The document contains a list of all the data centers Amazon controls either through subsidiary companies they own or 3rd party vendors. The first few pages or the 20 page document list the codes used by Amazon of each data center, later on in the document it lists contact and security details for each data center. To cover their tracks, Amazon arrogantly named one of their subsidiaries, Vandalay Industries, a play on words of the fictional company from the sitcom, Seinfeld.
Wikileaks has also produced a map pinpointing to the exact locations of each one of Amazons data centers around the world. There are more than 100 data centers, in nine countries, stretch from California to Japan.
The timing of this leak is very interesting. The press release from Wikileaks notes that a bid for a government contract to supply the Department of Defense with secure cloud storage ends tomorrow, October 12th 2018.
The Defense Department is looking for a single provider and other companies, including Oracle and IBM, have complained that the requirements unfairly favor Amazon. Bids on this contract are due tomorrow.
This new publication from Wikileaks could potentially lead to Amazon missing out on a $10 Billion contract with the DOJ, or at the very least the contract submissions revised. I'm sure rival cloud storage suppliers IBM and Oracle will have something to say about this. Here's an interesting article about the worries the nuclear industry have about the DoD moving all their data to cloud storage.
JEDI: Outlook for stability uncertain as Pentagon migrates to the cloud | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - 07/21/2018
In March, the Defense Department released a draft solicitation for a program known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). This solicitation provides private-sector firms a preliminary invitation to submit proposals for a new Pentagon initiative in cloud computing. (In April, an updated solicitation was released.) The department plans to spend up to $10 billion in the coming years to establish and maintain JEDI, a project that will involve both infrastructure and platform services and cover an as-yet-undetermined span of the Defense Department’s digital landscape.
Buried in the 100-page solicitation is a requirement that JEDI store not only classified information but also information designated “Q”—the Energy Department’s classification for information related to US nuclear capabilities (roughly comparable to a “top secret” clearance in the Defense Department). This linkage between cloud computing and nuclear secrets has naturally provoked concern. Even the best technologies present risks, and transformative changes rarely fail to create unforeseen consequences. These realities point toward two important questions. First, how will JEDI affect the ability of the US military to secure its nuclear secrets? Second, what will the JEDI contract and the Pentagon’s migration to cloud computing mean for international stability (specifically, could they create incentives for nuclear war)?
The press release also points to a story from the Atlantic about a $600 Million contract Amazon entered into in 2013 with the DoD.
Why is this Leak Important?
It's important because, as Wikileaks points out in their press release, Amazon accounts for 34% of all cloud storage services on the market today. This recent piece of research by the Synergy research group clearly shows Amazons dominance of the market.
This means that a lot of the internet is becoming extremely centralized and is a major security concern for anyone that understands the basics of data security. Not only is it a major security risk and a prime target for hackers having all this data stored in just a handful of locations, it also makes it a lot easier for governments to easily monitor a third of the worlds internet traffic.
Hopefully this new release will go a little way to helping to break up the monopoly Amazon has over the market, and relationship they have with the US government.
