Amazon's cloud arm, AWS, was still struggling on Tuesday to recover from a major outage that knocked thousands of websites and popular apps such as Snapchat and Reddit offline, disrupting businesses worldwide.
The disruption, one of the biggest since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction that crippled hospitals, banks and airports, has again exposed the fragility of global digital infrastructure.
After more than nine hours of downtime, some services started returning online, though AWS said several systems remained affected. Outage tracker Downdetector reported over 9,300 user complaints at the peak.
AWS attributed the problem to an internal subsystem that monitors network load balancers within its EC2 infrastructure. Efforts to restore the system showed early signs of progress in a few data centres, with recovery measures under way elsewhere.
While platforms like Reddit and Roblox had mostly stabilised, others — including Snapchat, Venmo and Duolingo — continued to face sporadic issues throughout the day.
What caused the AWS outage?
AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud.
Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms — ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems — that rely on its cloud infrastructure.
AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020.
According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services.
Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
Dependency on 'fragile infrastructures'
The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at European cybersecurity firm ESET, said: "This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures."
In the United Kingdom, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website.
Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science, said: "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service."
Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over four million users reported issues due to the incident.
Ryan Griffin, US cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners, said: "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue."
The websites and apps affected by the AWS outage
Ookla reported at least 1,000 companies were affected by the AWS outage. Snapchat logged over 7,500 disruption reports — down from a peak of 22,000 but still above early-morning levels.
The disruption also affected streaming platforms, including Amazon's Prime Video service and Disney+, as well as Perplexity AI, the Fortnite game, Airbnb and Duolingo.
Mobile telephone services and messaging apps Signal and Whatsapp were affected in Europe, according to Downdetector.
Artificial intelligence start-up Perplexity, crypto exchange Coinbase, and trading platform Robinhood also experienced outages linked to AWS, as did Amazon’s own services.
Although there's no evidence of a cyberattack, the scale of the breakdown fuelled speculation.
Cybersecurity expert Rafe Pilling said such incidents are understandable given AWS’s vast and complex reach, warning that even minor issues can trigger major global disruption.
