Global Internet Outage Disrupts Major Platforms Due to AWS Failure

An AWS outage disrupted major websites and apps worldwide, including Snapchat, Roblox, and UK banks. The issue began in AWS's US-East-1 region and was likely a technical fault. Services are recovering, and officials urge more cloud infrastructure diversification.

A widespread internet outage has disrupted numerous websites and applications across the globe, with users experiencing connectivity issues traced back to Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Several major platforms were impacted, including Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, alongside Amazon-owned services such as its main retail website and the Ring doorbell system.

In the United Kingdom, the outage also affected Lloyds Bank and its subsidiaries, Halifax and Bank of Scotland. Users reported difficulties accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website on Monday morning. Additionally, many Ring customers in the UK expressed frustrations on social media about their doorbells malfunctioning.

Tens of thousands of issue reports were logged across various platforms in the UK alone. Other services impacted included Wordle, Coinbase, Slack, Pokémon Go, Epic Games, PlayStation Network, and Peloton. By 10:30am UK time, Amazon indicated that the issue — which began around 8am — was subsiding, with AWS observing “significant signs of recovery.” At 11am, Amazon further confirmed that global services dependent on its US East Coast region, US-EAST-1, had also been restored.

The root of the disruption was located in AWS’s US East Coast infrastructure, which provides essential backend services to numerous global companies by hosting their data and operations. AWS, the leading provider of cloud computing services worldwide, began seeing “increased error rates and latencies” in this region shortly after midnight Pacific Daylight Time (8am BST). This technical malfunction had cascading effects globally, with Downdetector documenting widespread issues across multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes platform, which monitors internet outages, reported a significant uptick in disruptions Monday morning, many of which were centered in Virginia, home to AWS’s US-East-1 data center — the region identified as the source of the problem.

Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos, suggested the issue stemmed from an internal technical failure rather than a cyberattack. According to AWS’s service health dashboard, the problem was linked to DynamoDB, a database system used by websites to retrieve and manage data. Pilling noted, “When anything like this happens the concern that it’s a cyber incident is understandable. AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset. In this case it looks like it is an IT issue on the database side and they will be working to remedy it as an absolute priority.”

Dr Corinne Cath-Speth, head of digital at the human rights organization ARTICLE 19, highlighted the risks of centralized control in digital infrastructure. She stated, “We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot be dependent on a handful of companies.”

The UK government confirmed it is in communication with Amazon regarding the outage. A government spokesperson said, “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure. Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.”