Major Online Disruption Impacts Numerous Sites and Apps

An extensive web disruption has impacted numerous sites and applications globally, with users reporting issues getting online after problems at Amazon’s online infrastructure system.

The disrupted services encompass Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to a host of Amazon-managed platforms such as its key e-commerce platform and the Ring device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted as well as its affiliates the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with also reports of difficulties accessing the the tax authority online portal on the start of the week. Also in the UK, many Ring device owners turned to social media to report their home gadgets were failing.

Just within Britain, accounts of issues on individual platforms ran into the tens of thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the problem began in the east coast of the US at Amazon Web Services, a unit that supplies essential internet infrastructure for a host of firms, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. The cloud platform is the world’s largest online services platform.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), officials reported “higher problem frequencies and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a area on the east coast of the America. The widespread consequence was seen to hit services around the world, with the outage tracking website reporting outages with the same sites in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a tool that reports on online failures, additionally noted a surge in problems on the start of the week, and numerous instances located in the Virginia area, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the issues originated.