Drone attacks paralyze banking services in the Emirates. Amazon data centers, severely affected
Several banking and payment apps in the United Arab Emirates have become unavailable after Amazon Web Services data centers were hit in drone attacks amid escalating tensions in the Middle East.
Drone attacks on Amazon centers in the Emirates PHOTO: EPA EFE
Digital services in the United Arab Emirates have been severely affected after data centers belonging to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform were hit in drone attacks, reports CNBC. Two AWS data centers in the UAE and one facility in Bahrain suffered significant damage, forcing them to shut down.
Following the incident, several popular apps and financial services became unavailable, affecting thousands of users in the region.
Affected apps and banks
Among the platforms affected were ride-hailing and delivery app Careem, as well as payment companies Alaan and Hubpay.
Several major banking institutions also reported technical problems. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) has announced that its mobile banking application and call center services are temporarily unavailable. For its part, Emirates NBD reported difficulties in the operation of telephone services on Monday, problems that were fixed on Tuesday.
Enterprise software vendor Snowflake also reported disruption. “High connectivity issues and glitches in the region will continue until the power failures are resolved”according to a company incident report.
Investment app Sarwa announced outages on Monday due to AWS difficulties, but was back online on Tuesday. At the same time, Hubpay warned users that they may experience problems logging in.
“Outages are still ongoing”
The AWS Health Dashboard monitoring panel indicated that outages are still “in progress.” On Tuesday at 08:14 PST, AWS tweeted: “We continue to make progress in recovery efforts on several fronts”recommending that customers in the Middle East urgently migrate their workloads to other AWS regions.
The Alaan company initially announced that its mobile and web apps were offline due to a “AWS critical wedges caused by regional situation”, but the message was later withdrawn.
Meanwhile, Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha said on Tuesday that all services of the platform are working again.
The attacks, amid the escalation of the conflict
The incidents follow joint strikes by the United States and Israel on Iran over the weekend. Following these, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed, triggering a wave of Iranian attacks in the region.
Military targets and critical infrastructure, including data centers and oil facilities, were reportedly targeted, raising concerns about the security of digital infrastructure in the Middle East.
