Oct 11, 2018 - Technology
WikiLeaks outs Amazon's alleged data center locations
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Leaked file repository WikiLeaks on Thursday released a purported internal document from Amazon showing the secret locations of its data centers.
Why it matters: Amazon's data centers host some of the world's largest cloud storage facilities, used by businesses, including sensitive ones.
The big picture: Amazon's data centers span the U.S. and the globe.
- Domestically, there are 38 in Virginia, with several along the West Coast.
- Internationally, there are European data centers in Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg; Asian centers in China, Japan and Singapore; South American centers in Brazil; and centers in Australia.
- Some offices are co-located with other companies.
While WikiLeaks makes note of an office run under the pseudonym "Vandalay Industries," that office appears to be an outlier among the roughly 100 centers within the document.
Between the lines: The document is from 2015 or later.
- The eight previous versions listed in the document were each produced between August and October 2015, though a date is not listed for this file.
- The document is frequently misformatted. Japanese characters are represented by question marks, and it shows artifacts from the usually hidden formatting characters that would alter the presentation of the document line. It's very likely that the file passed through a more limited computer program than the one in which the file was first written.
What they're saying:
- Amazon was not immediately able to comment.
- WikiLeaks paired the release with a map of centers based on the document.
