Summary of Global Outage (AWS Disruption)
The following points summarize the impact and status of the recent internet disruption:
- Widespread Impact: Numerous leading global websites and applications experienced failures due to a major service outage within Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Key Apps Affected: Popular platforms such as Snapchat, Roblox, Duolingo, and Zoom reported significant user issues, including inaccessibility and login errors.
- Banking Disruption: The outage also extended to financial institutions, momentarily impacting services for customers of major banks like Lloyds and Halifax.
- The Root Cause: The disruption originated from AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing division, which serves as the foundational infrastructure for millions of large corporate platforms worldwide.
- Current Status: AWS has confirmed that they are now observing "significant signs of recovery", and most service requests should be processing successfully
User reports of issues affecting platforms are spiking, according to platform outage monitor Downdetector - with more than 5,000 issues flagged by Snapchat users.
Here's some of the brands users are reporting issues with:
'We Apologize for This': Lloyds Acknowledges Banking Service Disruption
Lloyds Bank has confirmed that the service interruption affecting its platforms and those of its associated banks, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, is connected to the ongoing Amazon Web Services (AWS) issues.
"You might have noticed news reports regarding problems with Amazon Web Services that are impacting numerous websites and apps throughout the UK today," the bank stated in an update posted on X (formerly Twitter).
"We recognize that this is currently affecting some of our own services. We apologize for this situation. We ask for your patience while we look into the matter."
This dependency has prompted criticism from certain experts, including IT Professor James Davenport of the University of Bath. He expressed concern that major UK banks were being impacted.
Professor Davenport suggested that banks should consider "limiting their reliance" to UK or European data centres, rather than depending on services operating primarily out of the United States.
Meanwhile, reports continue to circulate on social media regarding customers' debit/credit cards being declined due to the outage, though the BBC has not independently confirmed these claims.
'Significant Signs of Recovery' – Update from Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud service provider at the core of today's technical issues, has just issued an encouraging update regarding the incident.
In a recent statement published on its service status website, the company reported: "We are observing significant indicators of recovery."
The update further clarifies the improving situation: "The majority of requests should now be successful."
AWS noted that teams are still managing a queue of pending requests and committed to sharing further information as it becomes available.
As a reminder, AWS forms the essential digital backbone for the infrastructure of countless websites and applications used by millions globally.
Ring Doorbells Also Experiencing Issues
The extensive Amazon Web Services (AWS) failure is causing operational problems for a wide range of digital services, including the popular Ring security doorbells.
Affected customers have reported difficulties accessing certain functions. Specifically, some users are seeing a "failed to connect" message when attempting to open the Live View feature on their Ring app.
Snapchat and Duolingo Among Major Apps Down in Amazon Cloud Outage
A number of the world's most-used applications, including major platforms like Snapchat, language learning app Duolingo, and popular gaming service Roblox, have all become inaccessible.
The widespread failure appears to be directly linked to a significant operational issue currently impacting Amazon Web Services (AWS), the infrastructure provider for much of the modern internet.
AWS engineers working to fix issue and find cause
Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, says in an update on its status page there are "increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region".
Engineers are "immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause", it adds.