How Amazon Put Ukraine's 'Government in a Box' (latimes.com) 23
An anonymous reader shares a report: Since Februrary, Amazon has been playing Santa Claus to Ukraine, delivering planeloads of goods, including blankets, hygiene kits, diapers, food and toys, for the war-torn nation and refugees in Poland and other parts of Europe. But long term, what's more important to Ukrainians than the gifts coming in is what's going out: massive amounts of government, tax, banking and property data vulnerable to destruction and abuse should Russian invaders get their hands on it. Since the day Russia launched its invasion Feb. 24, Amazon has been working closely with the Ukrainian government to download essential data and ferry it out of the country in suitcase-sized solid-state computer storage units called Snowball Edge, then funneling the data into Amazon's cloud computing system.
"This is the most technologically advanced war in human history," said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's 31-year-old vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, referring not just to weapons but data too. Amazon Web Services' "leadership made a decision that saved the Ukrainian government and economy." Amazon has invested $75 million so far in its Ukraine effort, which includes the data transfer via the Snowballs. Fedorov, speaking at a tech conference in Las Vegas this month, called it "priceless." The data, 10 million gigabytes so far, represent "critical information infrastructure. This is core for operation of the economy, of the tax system, of banks, and the government overall," he said. The data also include property records whose safekeeping can help prevent theft of Ukrainian homes, businesses and land.
Through history, invaders have "come in and staged fake referendum and parceled out the land to their chums," said Liam Maxwell, head of government transformation at Amazon Web Services, the company's highly profitable cloud computing arm. "That kind of thing has been happening since William the Conquerer." The Odessa Journal newspaper reported in June that residents of the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol whose homes had been destroyed were being moved into the homes of citizens who had fled the area, and were being forced to find those who left and pressure them to cooperate in some fashion with the Russians. Maxwell, who's based in London, had already been working with Ukraine for years when it became clear by January that Russia planned to attack the country.
"This is the most technologically advanced war in human history," said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's 31-year-old vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, referring not just to weapons but data too. Amazon Web Services' "leadership made a decision that saved the Ukrainian government and economy." Amazon has invested $75 million so far in its Ukraine effort, which includes the data transfer via the Snowballs. Fedorov, speaking at a tech conference in Las Vegas this month, called it "priceless." The data, 10 million gigabytes so far, represent "critical information infrastructure. This is core for operation of the economy, of the tax system, of banks, and the government overall," he said. The data also include property records whose safekeeping can help prevent theft of Ukrainian homes, businesses and land.
Through history, invaders have "come in and staged fake referendum and parceled out the land to their chums," said Liam Maxwell, head of government transformation at Amazon Web Services, the company's highly profitable cloud computing arm. "That kind of thing has been happening since William the Conquerer." The Odessa Journal newspaper reported in June that residents of the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol whose homes had been destroyed were being moved into the homes of citizens who had fled the area, and were being forced to find those who left and pressure them to cooperate in some fashion with the Russians. Maxwell, who's based in London, had already been working with Ukraine for years when it became clear by January that Russia planned to attack the country.
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Next week: Amazon is attacked by Russia, all data is gone. Many admins in tears. Many other admins wondering why so many had all their eggs in one basket.
...then funneling the data into Amazon's cloud com (Score:1)
then funneling the data into Amazon's cloud computing system.
That is literally the worst thing they can do with it. They have it safely on physical storage and then they are taking it and putting it back online. They save it from an actual shooting war, only to expose it to hacking, and malfeasance. How many employees do they have? Have they vetted all of them?
Do the Ukrainians know what's being done with it?
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and now banks there are now owned by the Ukraine GOV account.
And that account may even have live 2FA forced off so that they can login without needing have an good network at all times.
Re:...then funneling the data into Amazon's cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
You're points on why it's a risk I believe are spot on.
But I disagree with it being the worse thing they can do. The worst thing is do nothing and have the data destroy or actual in control of it by the Russians.
Even with the risks you mentioned, it's still better than the alternative.
Leave it in disks doesn't allow them to asset what data is secure, backed up, and valid, so they need to start processing it instead of cold storaging the drives, with who knows what happening to it. This is the fastest way to recover and potentially get back on their feet should this disgusting war end.
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Don't ignore Ukraine in cyber defence, they've been on the receiving end of industrial attacks for longer than I can remember.
Re:...then funneling the data into Amazon's cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
It has the following benefits:
There are privacy implications, but it is far safer and more available than any solution which keeps the data inside the Ukraine right now.
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"Whoops, we put all the data in a public S3 bucket". That would hilarious, actually. It could only get better if they also put the path/credentials on Github.
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What good is the data if its sitting in cold storage offline? When you try to withdraw money from your bank account, or file your taxes, or buy or sell property, you need the data to be available to do that.
Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
That Ukraine was farsighted enough to realize what Russia would do when it attacked is a testament to those in power. As we've seen, Russia has no compunction about destroying anything and everything in Ukraine, including stealing children [apnews.com] and forcing them to learn Russian rather than Ukrainian.
Russia might be able to take bones from a cathedral [cnn.com] or a raccoon [newsweek.com], but not the government of Ukraine.
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with your id i know you know the answer to your question perfectly well, but good question anyway. thanks for asking ;-)
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They put a military base on top of the area where Genghis Kahn used to rule
Genghis Khan's empire included a large part of current Russia, plus Mongolia and Northern China. It is hard to put a military base on top of such a large area.
Key control? (Score:1)
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are you not entertained?????
Not only since William. (Score:1)
> to their chums... since William the Conquerer.
Apart from the referenda, which nobody bothered with until the modern era, all the rest of that had been going on for at least two thousand years before William, and in antiquity they sometimes also made a point of splitting up families and splintering communities (the Assyrians were infamous for doing this). Other times they would just execute all the fighting-age men, enslave the wom
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