A major outage has affected ‘half the internet’, with millions of people left unable to access sites including Snapchat, Fortnite, and Duolingo, as well as several banking apps.
At 11:35 BST (6:35am ET), Amazon said the underlying issue has been ‘fully mitigated’, adding that ‘most operations are succeeding normally now’.
However, the outage continues to wreak havoc around the globe, with millions of customers still experiencing issues accessing their favorite sites.
The problem lies with Amazon Web Services – a cloud computing service that powers much of the infrastructure behind many websites.
The outage has also affected popular Amazon services, including Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Ring and Amazon Prime Video.
The issues began shortly after 8am BST (3am ET), according to DownDetector, with more than 6,000 reports from affected US customers.
Another 1,600 users and counting are affected in the UK, according to DownDetector, a site that monitors internet outages.
Jake Moore, tech expert and security advisor at ESET, thinks the huge outage is likely due to an ‘internal error’ at Amazon, but said we can’t rule out a cyberattack at this stage.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: ‘While a cyberattack can’t be ruled out until AWS releases its full post-incident report, there’s no current evidence of hacking, data breaches or coordinated attacks.’
Amazon Web Services is hit with a worldwide outage that impacted hundreds of websites that use the company’s cloud-hosting service
The issues began shortly after 8am BST Monday, according to DownDetector, with more than 6,000 reports from affected US customers
The outage has also affected Amazon services including Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Ring and Amazon Prime Video. Pictured, Amazon.com on Monday
Some of the platforms affected on Monday morning include Amazon services like Amazon.com and Ring as well as gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox
DownDetector gets network status updates from social media platforms, reports submitted to its website and other sources around the web.
It ‘only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day’.
According to the site, the issue stems from problems at Amazon’s massive data center site in Northern Virginia (us-east-1), a critical hub for the global internet.
In all, 75 per cent of the reported problems are coming from us-east-1, while the remainder are coming from two other US sites.
Professor James Davenport, an IT expert from the University of Bath, says it’s ‘worrying’ that an outage in this region is impacting UK banking apps, including Lloyds and Halifax.
‘UK banks should be confining their usage to the UK, or at least European regions, but it might be that they rely on some service that actually runs out of US-EAST-1,’ he said.
‘Obviously, this is causing an impact now, but it might mean that some customer data is being handled in the USor possibly that customer usage patterns, even if not actual banking data, can be inferred. We don’t know.
‘This would seem to indicate at least some unexpected dependency (easy enough to happen, but proper cloud auditing should have detected it if Lloyds itself is responsible – quite possibly a third-party dependency which Lloyds has not guarded against). In any case, worrying.’
Several users were concerned that they couldn’t access Snapchat
One user found out about the outage after discovering their rain sounds weren’t playing via Amazon Alexa
Another 1,600 users and counting are affected in the UK, according to DownDetector, a site that monitors internet outages
Several frustrated users have taken to X to discuss the outage.
‘Ring doorbell/cameras not working for 13hrs, I can’t view history on the app & can’t sign in on the website…’ one user tweeted.
Another wrote: ‘Is anyone else’s Amazon Alexa down? Can’t turn on any lights at home since they’re all Alexa-controlled…’
And one joked: ‘Me coming to Twitter to actually verify I’m not the only one experiencing the outage on Snapchat,’ alongside a GIF.
AWS provides cloud computing services to individuals, universities, governments and companies worldwide, such as servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development and security.
When AWS goes down, so do other websites that use its services, which is an embarrassing blow to the Amazon-owned platform – as these companies, universities, individuals and governments pay to use the services.
Major British banks, including Lloyds and Halifax are among the services also affected, as well as GOV.UK, which is needed for applying for visas, renewing passports, and managing taxes.
The tech giant has acknowledged the issue on the AWS Health Dashboard page, saying that there is an ‘operational issue’ affecting ‘multiple services’.
One frustrated Amazon Alexa found they were left in darkness amid the outage
Taking to X, one user vented that their Ring doorbell wasn’t working
Several users have flocked to X to discuss the outage – with Snapchat one of the most talked-about apps
‘Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause,’ AWS said.
As yet it is unclear what the exact cause of the outage is; Daily Mail has contacted AWS for comment.
There are many causes behind online outages, but the problem is mostly due to technical errors relating to configuration.
However, other outages are due to cyber attacks – attempts by criminals to damage or destroy a computer network or system.
Mr Moore said this error looks to have caused a ‘cascading failure where one system’s slowdown disrupted others’ across the platform.
‘It once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures with very limited backup plans for such outages,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘AWS has about 30 per cent of the global cloud infrastructure market which makes up a large proportion of the internet.
‘So an outage like this can hit hard across the world.’
PlayStation (pictured) and Xbox are included in the list of those affected as they’re supported by Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing platform
GOV.UK is needed for applying for visas, renewing passports and managing taxes
Major British banks including Lloyds (pictured) and Halifax are among the services also affected, as well as GOV.UK
‘Because so many global apps and websites rely so heavily on AWS for cloud hosting and data processing, the disruption rapidly becomes widespread and creates a knock-on effect to many services.’
Dr Manny Niri, senior cyber security lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, thinks there has been a ‘serious failure’ at North Virginia (us-east-1).
‘The wide disruption of major services, from Amazon’s own platforms like Prime Video and Alexa to other services like Snapchat and Fortnite, appears, from what we know so far, to indicate a serious failure in the main AWS US-East-1 region,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘This does not seem to be just a small software problem but may involve a failure in a key part of the internet’s backbone, such as networking, storage, or compute services, which are essential for the operation of dependent applications.’
Dr Niri continued: ‘For all affected businesses, this incident is a strong reminder that relying on only one cloud region is very risky.
‘Companies should quickly assess their exposure, ensure they use multiple regions and failover systems, and maintain robust offline backups.
‘While cloud computing is very useful, this outage highlights the need for better resilience, redundancy, and clear communication from providers to reduce the impact of such problems and maintain customer trust.’
Andy Aitken, co–founder and CEO of mobile virtual network operator Honest Mobile, said the incident is ‘clear reminder of how fragile the web can be’.
‘A single technical problem in one provider can ripple across a huge number of services,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘Thankfully, these issues usually recover quickly, but it shows just how much of the internet depends on a handful of cloud providers keeping everything online.’
