AWS Says Customer Data Was Permanently Lost After Iranian Drone Attack

Six months after an Iranian drone attack destroyed multiple Amazon data centers, Amazon Web Services has acknowledged that some customer data stored in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates has been permanently lost.

AWS “failed to restore access to resources and data” hosted in some war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. Reuters also reported that the Iranian attack caused catastrophic damage to the data centers.

Irrecoverable AWS data loss in one UAE Availability Zone

AWS reported irrecoverable customer-data loss in one of the three Availability Zones in the UAE region: mec1-az2. Each Availability Zone is served by one or more Amazon data centers, according to the company’s documentation on AWS Availability Zones.

The company is still working on “regional resource recovery” and attempting to restore resources hosted in the UAE’s two other Availability Zones. AWS said it is replacing “affected infrastructure” and will provide customers with updates on service restoration in the coming months.

AWS says Bahrain disruption affected all three Availability Zones

The disruption appears to have been more widespread in Bahrain. Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three Availability Zones in the region.

“The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded the limits that our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand,” the AWS update states.