Substantial Online Outage Affects Dozens Sites and Applications

An extensive internet failure has disrupted dozens sites and applications around the world, with users experiencing problems getting online after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The disrupted apps encompass Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, along with multiple Amazon-managed platforms such as its primary shopping website and the Ring doorbell device manufacturer.

In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and the Scottish bank, with also reports of difficulties reaching the the tax authority website on that morning. Also in the UK, several Ring users turned to networks to state their security devices were failing.

In the UK alone, reports of disruptions on individual applications totaled the tens of thousands for each platform.

The company stated that the problem originated in the Atlantic coast of the United States at AWS, a unit that provides crucial internet infrastructure for numerous firms, who rent out capacity on Amazon servers. The cloud platform is the most extensive web hosting platform.

Shortly after midnight (PDT) in the US (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased problem frequencies and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a zone on the eastern US of the United States. The widespread consequence seemed to affect services globally, with the Downdetector site reporting problems with the same sites in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks online failures, also reported a surge in problems on Monday morning, and numerous instances located in the state of Virginia, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the problems began.