Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing backbone of much of the internet, suffered a massive outage on Monday that took down thousands of websites and popular apps including Snapchat, Reddit, Venmo, and Roblox, paralyzing parts of the digital economy and exposing the fragility of global online infrastructure.
The disruption, lasting over three hours, marked the most extensive internet failure since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction that crippled hospitals, airports, and financial institutions. According to AWS, affected systems began showing significant signs of recovery by 6:00 a.m. ET (1000 GMT), with most requests now succeeding though engineers continue to clear a backlog.
The outage sent ripples across industries from gaming platforms like Fortnite and Clash Royale to financial apps such as Chime and Coinbase, and even Amazon’s own services, including Prime Video, Alexa, and its main shopping website. Down detector reported over 4 million user complaints globally, while apps like Snapchat saw disruptions drop from 22,000 to around 4,000 reports as systems slowly recovered.
Experts said the issue originated from a networking system used to control one of AWS’s database products. Cyber engineer Junade Ali noted that since the fault could be resolved centrally, full recovery was likely within hours. However, the incident once again raised alarms about the world’s dependence on just a handful of cloud giants AWS, Microsoft, and Google to keep critical online services running.
The outage also affected UK institutions including Lloyds Bank, Vodafone, and the HMRC website, underlining how deeply everyday life is tied to cloud connectivity. While AWS has not indicated any signs of a cyberattack, cybersecurity analysts said the sheer scale of the event inevitably fueled speculation. When anything like this happens, concerns about cyber incidents are understandable, said Rafe Pilling of Sophos. AWS’s vast digital footprint means even a small glitch can cause a global tremor.