Significant Web Outage Hits Dozens Online Platforms and Apps

A large-scale internet outage has disrupted dozens online platforms and apps globally, as users reporting problems connecting to the web after problems at Amazon’s online infrastructure platform.

The disrupted platforms comprise Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as several Amazon-owned operations like its primary shopping website and the Ring doorbell device manufacturer.

Throughout Britain, the financial institution Lloyds was affected in addition to its affiliates Halifax and the Scottish bank, with further notifications of issues reaching the HMRC online portal on that morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring users turned to social media to report their doorbells were failing.

In the UK alone, notifications of problems on individual platforms reached the thousands for every service.

The company stated that the problem began in the eastern region of the US at the cloud division, a division that supplies vital online infrastructure for a host of firms, who utilize capacity on AWS infrastructure. AWS is the world’s largest web hosting service.

Soon after late night (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased failure rates and slowdowns” for the cloud services in a zone on the eastern US of the America. The ripple effect seemed to affect apps around the world, and the problem monitoring service reporting issues with the corresponding services in multiple continents.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a tool that tracks internet outages, further indicated a rise in problems on that morning, including several cases found in the Virginia area, the site of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where officials confirmed the outage began.