Banking apps and payment services are experiencing outages as a result of drone strikes on Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
AWS confirmed two of its data centres in the country, as well as a facility in Bahrain, were hit as the US-Iran war escalates in the region.
Among the UEA apps impacted by the conflict including delivery and taxi platform Careem, and payments companies Alaan and Hubpay.
Furthermore, banking providers ADCB and Emirates NBD have reported outages, as well as software provider Snowflake.
Banking app outages are being caused by US-Iran war
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GETTY
While no UK-based banking services have been impacted, around 200,000 Britons are currently based in the Gulf States.
Over the weekend, the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, resulting in the death of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene.
In response, Tehran has launched a wave of attacks on US military bases across the region, as well as on the critical energy infrastructure based in Gulf States.
On the AWS Health Dashboard, the service posted that the disruption impacting banking app outages remain “ongoing”.
UK-based bank apps have been hit by outages in recent months
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In a statement posTed at 8:14am PST, AWS said: “We continue to make progress on recovery efforts across multiple workstreams.
“We continue to strongly recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.”
Around the same time, Alaan’s mobile and web apps were offline due to a “critical AWS outage caused by the ongoing regional situation,” before shortly removing the message.
In a post on X, ADCB said: “Due to a recent region-wide IT disruption, the ADCB Mobile Banking App and Contact Centre services are temporarily unavailable.”
AWS data centres have been hit
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GETTYSaid drone strikes took place on Sunday (March 1), with “objects” hitting one of AWS’ data centers, CNBC reports.
AWS added: “In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” AWS said on Monday.
“These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage.”