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AmazonAtlas - 11 October, 2018

AmazonAtlas
11 October, 2018

Today, 11 October 2018, WikiLeaks publishes a "Highly Confidential" internal document from the
Leaked Documents
cloud computing provider Amazon. The document from late 2015 lists the addresses and some
AmazonAtlas_v1
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. Bids on this contract are due tomorrow.

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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