4 ms·

If you wanted to blow something up to make the west suffer, an AWS datacenter would probably be a pretty good target. I wonder at what point that becomes a legi

If you wanted to blow something up to make the west suffer, an AWS datacenter would probably be a pretty good target. I wonder at what point that becomes a legitimate national security concern, and the government steps in to provide protection.

mediascreen 9y ago
Wouldn't you have to blow up at least all the datacenters in a region to make an impact?
- cm2187 9y ago
  All you need to blow is a few cables.
  - cachvico 9y ago
    Then all that's needed to repair is a few cables.
  - mediascreen 9y ago
    Well, you need to disable redundant ISP or power cables to all datacenters in a region. and that would probably be pretty easy to recover from in a day or two. I imagine Amazon has some on site security measures as well. It would be interesting to see how important services would cope with their main region going down for more than a few days.
    - cm2187 9y ago
      Not that I think it is wise to discuss optimising a terrorist activity on a public forum, though it is interesting from a threat analysis point of view. You don't need to severe both power and data cables. For power the datacentre should be able to cope for a while, particularly if it has access to fuel deliveries. Data cable should be both easier to severe and more difficult to recover from (not the least to identify which cable has been cut where). Most of the infrastructure of a country in term of cables run along railway tracks, sewers, etc. This means thousands of kilometers of cable even for a small country, and it is impossible to secure everything. It is impossible to severe everything either but you don't need to severe every single cable. As long as you severe enough of the backbone, the other cables will be overloaded. So I don't think it would take that much effort for a network of terrorists to create havoc in the communications of a country for at least a few days to a week. And the consequences for the economy can be pretty dire. We have seen with BA what happens when their datacentre goes offline. Their all fleet is grounded. I imagine the consequences of a country-wide outage could be pretty dramatic. Unlikely anyone would die but you could really dent the GDP.
      - plandis 9y ago
        But if that's your methodology, you'd need to cut several cables in different locations simultaneously. A single cable doesn't take too long to fix (a couple hours, tops) and there are probably several redundant backups to handle bandwidth in the interim.
  - bluedino 9y ago
    Why blow up anything or damage any cables? Hack the computer of an Amazon employee and do your damage there. The last S4 outage was because of someone fat fingering a script, imagine what someone could do that really wanted to mess stuff up.
    - unclebucknasty 9y ago
      This. Could've saved myself a comment elsewhere on this thread. But, yeah, I'm kinda' surprised that this HN crowd in particular is so focused on hardware vectors.
      - martyvis 9y ago
        And ultimately it leads you back to targeting the IT operations centre for the business where they provision equally to say both AWS and Azure for redundancy. At that point you can knock all of the biz cloud capacity off.
      - martyvis 9y ago
        And ultimately it leads you back to targeting the IT operations centre for the business where they provision equally to say both AWS and Azure for redundancy. At that point you can knock all of the biz cloud capacity off.
- YawningAngel 9y ago
  There are probably some people careless enough that destroying a single data centre would damage them. Most serious contenders (e.g. My employer) have fully redundant active-active setups across regions, so you'd have to engineer a massive outage to take out real shops. Of course, if you completely remove an entire AWS region you might induce very damaging stresses on other regions as people fail over.
- taheca 9y ago
  fight club update anyone?
- bdcravens 9y ago
  I think the number of applications running on AWS in a non-HA manner is very high, so a single datacenter going offline would have some impact.
gaius 9y ago
legitimate national security concern, and the government steps in to provide protection There are a LOT of far softer targets that go unprotected. A terrorist attack on a sewage plant for a major city would be far more devastating than knocking out a few websites.
- peteretep 9y ago
  I feel like the point of the article we're commenting on is that AWS is far from "a few websites"
  - gaius 9y ago
    You can live without Netflix much longer than you can without a flushing toilet, is the point I'm making. Yet we don't have armed guards patrolling the sewageworks... It's a matter of priority how finite security personnel are deployed.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      I used to work at a company that had a large cage in a local data center - one of the other cages in the same room was apparently for the local police force (we weren't supposed to know this!). It wouldn't surprise me if those police systems have moved, or are moving, to Azure or AWS data centers.
      - dx034 9y ago
        Police would probably still work fine without data centers for a few days. As long as they can communicate and 911 works, they can do most of their job in the short run. It's much worse if benefits or paychecks don't get paid. For many people that means that they won't be able to buy groceries as soon as a few days later. Not the standard HN crowd, but many people depend on regular paychecks and can be in trouble if it comes even one day late.
        gaius 9y ago
lithos 9y ago
Amazon's own data centers are tiny (compared to most) that taking one out would almost be a waste of time. Even one of their large colocations would probably be a waste. If you wanted that type of destruction, and be noticed, you would need a city leveler type event in a data center heavy area.
empath75 9y ago
Most people wouldn't even notice. They'd have to blow up a region and at that point, you have bigger problems.
earthboundkid 9y ago
Yes, this goes to show that there are ~zero terrorists in the US. The US has an almost infinite supply of soft targets, but since 9/11 there have been no attacks of any consequence. There have been a few minor attacks like Boston bombers, but those have all been laughably amateurish. The US has no terrorism problem. In 1979, the Irish killed the Queen's uncle in law, and in 1984, they blew up a hotel where Thatcher was staying. That's a serious terrorism problem! What the US has is nothing by comparison. We were unlucky on 9-11, and ever since we've been distorting our foreign policy out of unreasonable fear.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    Miturban Izderti?
erentz 9y ago
A great soft target is electricity grid. The timelines for manufacturing large transformers for example can be many months and they usually don't have as much redundancy as you would expect. A semi coordinated attack against the grid, using dynamite to take out a number of pylons along main HV lines, easily accessible because they're out in rural areas. Combine with a number of sticks thrown over fences at transformers. And you could massively impact the US economy for months.
- dx034 9y ago
  The economist had a pretty good article about that. It dealt with electromagnetic impulses, as those could take out several at once: http://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potential-impact-rich-countries-prolonged-loss-electricity-disaster http://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potenti...

mediascreen 9y ago

Wouldn't you have to blow up at least all the datacenters in a region to make an impact?

cm2187 9y ago
All you need to blow is a few cables.
- cachvico 9y ago
  Then all that's needed to repair is a few cables.
- mediascreen 9y ago
  Well, you need to disable redundant ISP or power cables to all datacenters in a region. and that would probably be pretty easy to recover from in a day or two. I imagine Amazon has some on site security measures as well. It would be interesting to see how important services would cope with their main region going down for more than a few days.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Not that I think it is wise to discuss optimising a terrorist activity on a public forum, though it is interesting from a threat analysis point of view. You don't need to severe both power and data cables. For power the datacentre should be able to cope for a while, particularly if it has access to fuel deliveries. Data cable should be both easier to severe and more difficult to recover from (not the least to identify which cable has been cut where). Most of the infrastructure of a country in term of cables run along railway tracks, sewers, etc. This means thousands of kilometers of cable even for a small country, and it is impossible to secure everything. It is impossible to severe everything either but you don't need to severe every single cable. As long as you severe enough of the backbone, the other cables will be overloaded. So I don't think it would take that much effort for a network of terrorists to create havoc in the communications of a country for at least a few days to a week. And the consequences for the economy can be pretty dire. We have seen with BA what happens when their datacentre goes offline. Their all fleet is grounded. I imagine the consequences of a country-wide outage could be pretty dramatic. Unlikely anyone would die but you could really dent the GDP.
    - plandis 9y ago
      But if that's your methodology, you'd need to cut several cables in different locations simultaneously. A single cable doesn't take too long to fix (a couple hours, tops) and there are probably several redundant backups to handle bandwidth in the interim.
- bluedino 9y ago
  Why blow up anything or damage any cables? Hack the computer of an Amazon employee and do your damage there. The last S4 outage was because of someone fat fingering a script, imagine what someone could do that really wanted to mess stuff up.
  - unclebucknasty 9y ago
    This. Could've saved myself a comment elsewhere on this thread. But, yeah, I'm kinda' surprised that this HN crowd in particular is so focused on hardware vectors.
    - martyvis 9y ago
      And ultimately it leads you back to targeting the IT operations centre for the business where they provision equally to say both AWS and Azure for redundancy. At that point you can knock all of the biz cloud capacity off.
    - martyvis 9y ago
      And ultimately it leads you back to targeting the IT operations centre for the business where they provision equally to say both AWS and Azure for redundancy. At that point you can knock all of the biz cloud capacity off.
YawningAngel 9y ago
There are probably some people careless enough that destroying a single data centre would damage them. Most serious contenders (e.g. My employer) have fully redundant active-active setups across regions, so you'd have to engineer a massive outage to take out real shops. Of course, if you completely remove an entire AWS region you might induce very damaging stresses on other regions as people fail over.
taheca 9y ago
fight club update anyone?
bdcravens 9y ago
I think the number of applications running on AWS in a non-HA manner is very high, so a single datacenter going offline would have some impact.

gaius 9y ago

legitimate national security concern, and the government steps in to provide protection There are a LOT of far softer targets that go unprotected. A terrorist attack on a sewage plant for a major city would be far more devastating than knocking out a few websites.

peteretep 9y ago
I feel like the point of the article we're commenting on is that AWS is far from "a few websites"
- gaius 9y ago
  You can live without Netflix much longer than you can without a flushing toilet, is the point I'm making. Yet we don't have armed guards patrolling the sewageworks... It's a matter of priority how finite security personnel are deployed.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    I used to work at a company that had a large cage in a local data center - one of the other cages in the same room was apparently for the local police force (we weren't supposed to know this!). It wouldn't surprise me if those police systems have moved, or are moving, to Azure or AWS data centers.
    - dx034 9y ago
      Police would probably still work fine without data centers for a few days. As long as they can communicate and 911 works, they can do most of their job in the short run. It's much worse if benefits or paychecks don't get paid. For many people that means that they won't be able to buy groceries as soon as a few days later. Not the standard HN crowd, but many people depend on regular paychecks and can be in trouble if it comes even one day late.
      - gaius 9y ago

lithos 9y ago

Amazon's own data centers are tiny (compared to most) that taking one out would almost be a waste of time. Even one of their large colocations would probably be a waste. If you wanted that type of destruction, and be noticed, you would need a city leveler type event in a data center heavy area.

empath75 9y ago

Most people wouldn't even notice. They'd have to blow up a region and at that point, you have bigger problems.

earthboundkid 9y ago

Yes, this goes to show that there are ~zero terrorists in the US. The US has an almost infinite supply of soft targets, but since 9/11 there have been no attacks of any consequence. There have been a few minor attacks like Boston bombers, but those have all been laughably amateurish. The US has no terrorism problem. In 1979, the Irish killed the Queen's uncle in law, and in 1984, they blew up a hotel where Thatcher was staying. That's a serious terrorism problem! What the US has is nothing by comparison. We were unlucky on 9-11, and ever since we've been distorting our foreign policy out of unreasonable fear.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Miturban Izderti?

erentz 9y ago

A great soft target is electricity grid. The timelines for manufacturing large transformers for example can be many months and they usually don't have as much redundancy as you would expect. A semi coordinated attack against the grid, using dynamite to take out a number of pylons along main HV lines, easily accessible because they're out in rural areas. Combine with a number of sticks thrown over fences at transformers. And you could massively impact the US economy for months.

dx034 9y ago
The economist had a pretty good article about that. It dealt with electromagnetic impulses, as those could take out several at once: http://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potential-impact-rich-countries-prolonged-loss-electricity-disaster http://www.economist.com/news/world-if/21724908-huge-potenti...