Substantial Internet Outage Impacts Dozens Websites and Applications

A widespread online outage has affected dozens online platforms and apps globally, with users experiencing issues accessing the internet after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The disrupted services encompass the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-operated services including its primary shopping platform and the Ring doorbell doorbell company.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was affected in addition to its affiliates the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, and further notifications of difficulties using the HMRC site on that morning. Furthermore across the UK, many Ring device owners turned to networks to state their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, notifications of problems on individual platforms totaled the many thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the problem originated in the Atlantic coast of the US at Amazon Web Services, a unit that supplies crucial online backbone for numerous businesses, who lease space on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the biggest global cloud computing platform.

Soon after midnight (PDT) in the US (8am BST), the company announced “elevated failure rates and latencies” for AWS services in a zone on the east coast of the America. The cascading impact was seen to hit services around the world, with the outage tracking website showing issues with the same sites in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a tool that reports on web disruptions, additionally noted a increase in issues on that morning, including several cases situated in the state of Virginia, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the issues began.