Major Internet Disruption Hits Dozens Online Platforms and Apps

A large-scale internet disruption has impacted numerous sites and applications worldwide, as users reporting issues connecting to the web due to difficulties at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The affected services encompass the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-managed operations like its primary shopping platform and the Ring security device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was affected along with its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of difficulties reaching the HM Revenue and Customs site on Monday morning. Additionally in Britain, several Ring users used networks to complain their home gadgets were malfunctioning.

Solely in the United Kingdom, notifications of disruptions on particular apps ran into the thousands for every service.

The company stated that the outage began in the east coast of the United States at the cloud division, a unit that provides crucial web infrastructure for a host of firms, who utilize capacity on AWS infrastructure. AWS is the world’s largest web hosting system.

Soon after the start of the day (PDT) in the US (8 in the morning BST), Amazon confirmed “elevated failure rates and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a region on the east coast of the United States. The ripple effect appeared to hit services globally, with the Downdetector site reporting outages with the corresponding services in various regions.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks web disruptions, further indicated a surge in problems on the start of the week, and numerous instances located in the Virginia area, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where AWS said the problems originated.