Amazon cloud computing outage disrupts Snapchat, Ring and many other online services

By KELVIN CHAN Associated Press LONDON AP Internet users around the world faced widespread disruption early on Monday because of a trouble at Amazon s cloud computing arrangement that took down dozens of major online services including social media site Snapchat the Roblox and Fortnite video games and chat app Signal About three hours after the outage began Amazon Web Services declared it was starting to recover from the concern Related Articles In the current era in History October Hearings question alleged Communist influence in Hollywood Ticker China accuses US of cyberattack Meta adding AI parental controls Gift cards key money laundering net Protecting the flock A complicated challenge amid rising threats to churches Shooting outside a dorm at Oklahoma State wounds after a dispute at a party Amazon Web Services provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to several cabinet departments universities and businesses including The Associated Press which allows them to provide online services On DownDetector a website that tracks online outages users broadcasted issues with Snapchat Roblox Fortnite online broker Robinhood the McDonald s app and multiple other services DownDetector stated the problems were Possibly related to issues at Amazon Web Services Coinbase and Signal both reported on X that they were experiencing issues related to the AWS outage Even Amazon s own services weren t immune Users of the company s Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa-powered smart speakers posted on DownDetector that they weren t working while others revealed they were unable to access the Amazon website or download books to their Kindle Amazon pinned the outage on issues related to their domain name system an apparatus that converts web addresses into IP addresses so websites and apps can load on internet-connected devices The first signs of trouble emerged at around a m Eastern Time when Amazon Web Services revealed on its Healthcare Dashboard that it was inspecting increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST- Region Later the company released that there were key error rates and that engineers were actively working on the difficulty Around a m Eastern Time the company declared that it was seeing recovery across largest part of the affected services We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST- have also recovered it announced adding that it is working on a full resolution This is not the first time issues with Amazon s key services have caused widespread disruptions Countless popular internet services were down after a brief outage in AWS s longest outage in newest history occurred in late when companies everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services were affected for more than five hours Outages also happened in and The company released that internal AWS services were affected by the issue AWS customers include certain of the world s biggest businesses and organizations So much of the world now relies on these three or four big cloud compute companies who provide the underlying infrastructure that when there s an issue like this it can be really impactful across a broad range a broad spectrum of online services stated Patrick Burgess a cybersecurity expert at U K -based BCS The Chartered Institute for IT The world now runs on the cloud and the internet is seen as a utility like water or electricity as we spend so much of our lives on our smartphones Burgess revealed And because so much of the online world s plumbing is underpinned by a handful of companies when something goes wrong it s very laborious for users to pinpoint what is happening because we don t see Amazon we just see Snapchat or Roblox Burgess mentioned The good news is that this kind of issue is usually relatively fast to resolve and there s no indication that it was caused by a cyber matter like a cyberattack Burgess commented This looks like a good old-fashioned machinery issue something s gone wrong and it will be fixed by Amazon he revealed There are well-established processes to deal with outages at Amazon Web Services as well as rivals Google and Microsoft which together provide the bulk of the world s cloud computing infrastructure Burgess commented adding that such outages are usually fixed in hours rather than days Amazon Web Services stated at about a m Eastern time that majority of AWS Arrangement operations are succeeding normally now