Amazon has reported that its cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is recovering from a significant outage that impacted online activities globally. This disruption affected numerous services, including those utilized by various governments, universities, and major corporations, such as The Associated Press.
The outage, which started around 3:11 a.m. Eastern Time, was initially reported by AWS on its Health Dashboard, indicating that they were “investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” As the day progressed, users across multiple platforms expressed their frustrations on DownDetector, a website that monitors online outages. Popular services like Snapchat, Roblox, and Fortnite faced operational issues, as did financial service Robinhood and the McDonald’s app. Coinbase and Signal also confirmed their difficulties on X, attributing them to the AWS outage.
AWS later noted “significant error rates” and indicated that its engineers were actively addressing the problem. By approximately 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time, the situation began to improve, with the company announcing that it observed recovery in most affected services. AWS further confirmed that global services relying on the US-EAST-1 Region had also seen restoration while emphasizing that they were working towards a “full resolution.”
With a client base that includes some of the world’s largest corporations and organizations, AWS plays a crucial role in today’s digital landscape. Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT in the U.K., commented on the profound reliance on a few dominant cloud computing firms, stating that incidents like this have widespread repercussions across a variety of online services. He remarked, “The world now runs on the cloud,” likening the internet to utilities such as water or electricity, particularly due to the integral role smartphones play in daily life.
Burgess also highlighted the challenges users face during such outages, explaining that most people see the symptoms — disruptions in platforms like Snapchat or Roblox — rather than the underlying cause related to AWS. He reassured that these types of problems are generally resolved relatively quickly and noted that there was no indication of a cyber incident, such as a cyberattack, being the cause. “This looks like a good old-fashioned technology issue; something has gone wrong and it will be fixed by Amazon,” he added.
The expert emphasized that Amazon Web Services, along with its competitors Google and Microsoft, has established protocols for handling such outages. Typically, he noted, these disruptions are resolved within “hours rather than days.” By approximately 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time, AWS reported that “most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,” indicating that the major issues were being resolved and standard operations were being restored.
This incident underlines the increasing dependence of modern society on cloud computing services and the essential role they play in facilitating daily online activities.
