Internet users worldwide experienced widespread disruptions on Monday due to a problem with Amazon’s cloud computing service in the United States. The outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) affected numerous major online operations, including social media app Snapchat, video games Roblox and Fortnite, and online platforms such as Airbnb. Several banks in the United Kingdom were also impacted.
Some of Amazon’s own services, including its Ring doorbell cameras and Prime Video streaming platform, were affected by the outage. Users reported failures throughout the day on DownDetector, a website that tracks online outages. Approximately three hours after the disruption began, Amazon Web Services announced that it was starting to recover from the issue.
AWS provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to many government departments, universities, and businesses. The company attributed the outage to issues related to its domain name system, which converts web addresses into IP addresses for websites and apps to load on devices connected to the internet. Cybersecurity expert Patrick Burgess of UK-based BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, noted that the world’s reliance on a handful of companies for internet infrastructure can make issues like this highly impactful across many online services.
This is not the first instance of Amazon’s key services causing widespread disruptions. In 2023, a brief breakdown affected many popular internet operations, and in 2021, AWS experienced its longest outage in recent history, lasting over five hours. Amazon’s rivals are also susceptible to such challenges, as evidenced by a July 2024 outage affecting Microsoft Windows computers that disrupted airports, hospitals, and organizations worldwide, with an estimated 8.5 million systems crashing and unable to be restarted.
The incident highlights the significance of cloud computing infrastructure and the potential consequences of disruptions to these services. As the world becomes increasingly reliant on online operations, the importance of robust and reliable cloud computing infrastructure cannot be overstated. With the growing dependence on a few key companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, the impact of outages can be far-reaching and significant.