Amazon’s AWS faces rocky recovery after global outage hits major apps and websites
While Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, outage tracker Downdetector showed that other major apps such as Snapchat and Duolingo continued to face intermittent disruptions, with users reporting renewed connection and loading issues later in the day.
FILE PHOTO: A logo for Amazon Web Services (AWS) is seen at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo
Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was still battling to restore operations on Monday (Oct 20) after a massive outage knocked out thousands of websites and popular apps such as Snapchat and Reddit, disrupting businesses and digital services worldwide.
The disruption which was the largest since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction that crippled hospitals, airports and banks. The new meltdown exposes the fragility of the world’s highly connected digital infrastructure.
After more than nine hours of downtime, some applications were gradually returning online as of 1:00 p.m. ET (1700 GMT). But AWS said it was still experiencing elevated errors across several services.
“We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system,” AWS said in an update on its status page, adding that the issue stemmed from an internal subsystem within its EC2 network load balancers used to distribute traffic between servers.
AWS said the problem originated from its US-EAST-1 site in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest web services hub, which has suffered similar outages in 2021 and 2020. Steps to resolve EC2 system-related issues had shown “early signs of recovery” in some data centers, the company added.
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, more than 9,300 users reported AWS problems as of 1:00 p.m. ET, higher than the earlier peak of 5,800 reports. Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over four million users were affected globally.
APPS AND BANKS AMONG THOSE HIT
While Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, other apps like Snapchat, PayPal’s Venmo, and Duolingo, were still reporting issues. Amazon’s own platforms, including its shopping website, Prime Video, and Alexa, were also hit, though some improvement was noted later in the day.
Gaming and financial platforms were also affected, including Fortnite, Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, and trading apps Coinbase and Robinhood, all of which attributed disruptions to AWS. Uber rival Lyft also experienced downtime in the United States.
In Britain, Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Vodafone, BT, and the UK tax and payments authority HMRC were hit, according to Downdetector’s UK tracker.
EXPERTS WARN OF “FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURES”
Experts said the outage highlighted the global dependency on a few large cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. It further highlights that one failure can cripple vast portions of the digital economy.
“This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures,” said Jake Moore, cybersecurity advisor at ESET.
Nishanth Sastry of the University of Surrey said many major firms had “relied on just one service,” leaving them vulnerable to cascading failures.
Although AWS has not suggested a cyberattack, analysts said the scale of the outage has fuelled speculation.
“When anything like this happens, the concern that it’s a cyber incident is understandable,” said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos.
“AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset.”
