Major Online Failure Affects Dozens Websites and Apps

A large-scale online outage has disrupted numerous online platforms and applications around the world, with users reporting problems getting online following issues at Amazon’s web hosting platform.

The affected services encompass Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as multiple Amazon-managed platforms such as its key e-commerce platform and the Ring security doorbell company.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was disrupted as well as its branches Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were additional accounts of difficulties reaching the the tax authority online portal on the start of the week. Additionally in Britain, several Ring device owners turned to online platforms to report their security devices were not working.

Solely in the United Kingdom, accounts of issues on particular applications ran into the tens of thousands for each platform.

The company stated that the problem started in the eastern region of the US at the cloud division, a division that provides vital online backbone for many companies, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the most extensive cloud computing system.

Just after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), Amazon confirmed “elevated failure rates and slowdowns” for AWS services in a region on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The cascading impact appeared to affect platforms worldwide, and the Downdetector site showing outages with the corresponding services in multiple continents.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors web disruptions, further indicated a surge in outages on that morning, with many of them located in the state of Virginia, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where AWS said the outage originated.