A significant outage affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) has disrupted a wide range of online services, impacting websites, banks, and even government operations.
On Monday morning, Amazon announced that the outage had been “fully mitigated” and that most of its services are resuming normal functionality after a prolonged period during which many internet users faced accessibility issues.
The outage, which commenced around 3 a.m. Eastern Time, was attributed to DNS (Domain Name System) complications. DNS is a pivotal technology that translates web addresses into IP addresses, enabling apps and websites to load correctly.
While some issues can be resolved quickly, resolving DNS problems can occasionally take longer due to their complexity.
Numerous key applications were disrupted during the outage. Notable platforms such as Coinbase, Fortnite, Signal, and Zoom experienced significant downtime, along with Amazon’s own services, which include its Ring video surveillance products.
AWS is a critical infrastructure provider for millions of businesses and organizations relying on its services for hosting websites, applications, and various online systems. The company operates data centers worldwide and holds at least a 30% share of the global cloud market.
Amazon has yet to disclose the exact cause of this significant outage.
The recent incident follows a notable global internet outage in 2024, when a faulty update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike caused millions of computers to crash, leading to airport delays and extensive service disruptions that took days to resolve.
Additionally, in 2021, a malfunction at DNS provider Akamai resulted in some of the largest websites worldwide, including FedEx, Steam, and the PlayStation Network, becoming temporarily inaccessible.
