United States: Amazon Web Services (AWS) has resolved a major outage that disrupted hundreds of websites and apps worldwide, highlighting the risks of over-reliance on a few dominant cloud providers.
The disruption impacted more than 1,000 platforms, including social media services like Snapchat, popular apps such as Duolingo, online games including Fortnite, and major banks like Lloyds and Halifax.
According to the platform outage monitor Downdetector, user reports of problems surged to over 11 million globally during the incident.
Reports first began around 07:00 BST, and within a few hours, Downdetector recorded over four million problem reports from 500 different sites, more than double the number typically observed across a regular weekday. The disruptions had affected even more services, including Reddit, as platforms scrambled to recover.
Mikhail Nilov@Pexels | Cropped by BH
AWS said the outage appeared to be linked to DNS resolution issues with the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. The Domain Name System (DNS) is critical to how the internet functions, translating website names into numerical addresses readable by computers. Interruptions to DNS can leave websites inaccessible, preventing users from accessing essential services.
Experts emphasised that the incident demonstrates both the interdependence of digital infrastructure and the vulnerabilities of concentrating cloud services in the hands of a few providers. Prof Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey stated that, “Small errors, often human-made, can have widespread and significant impact.” Others warned that companies relying on cloud platforms should invest more in backup systems and resilient architectures.
Amazon confirmed that services returned to normal by around 23:00 BST, after throttling parts of its own system to address the issue. Analysts warned that, with around 70 percent of cloud computing dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, similar incidents could pose significant risks to business continuity and the wider economy.
The outage has renewed calls for diversification of cloud services and increased structural resilience, as dependency on a small number of providers makes global infrastructure highly vulnerable to failures.
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