Major Internet Outage Hits Numerous Sites and Apps

A widespread online failure has impacted numerous websites and applications globally, and users experiencing problems accessing the internet following issues at Amazon’s cloud computing system.

The impacted platforms comprise Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, as well as multiple Amazon-operated platforms including its main retail site and the Ring device manufacturer.

In the UK, Lloyds bank was disrupted in addition to its subsidiaries Halifax and the Scottish bank, while there were also reports of difficulties accessing the the tax authority website on Monday morning. Furthermore across the UK, many Ring users took to networks to report their security devices were malfunctioning.

Just within Britain, reports of disruptions on specific applications ran into the tens of thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the issue started in the eastern region of the US at Amazon Web Services, a section that offers crucial internet infrastructure for many businesses, who lease capacity on Amazon servers. AWS is the most extensive cloud computing platform.

Shortly after the start of the day (PDT) in the America (morning UK time), officials reported “increased failure rates and latencies” for AWS services in a region on the eastern US of the America. The ripple effect was seen to affect platforms globally, and the Downdetector site indicating outages with the corresponding services in different parts of the world.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a platform that tracks online failures, further indicated a rise in issues on Monday morning, including several cases found in Virginia, the site of the eastern US data center where officials confirmed the issues started.