People struggled to access social media app Snapchat, online game Fortnite, payments app Venmo and other popular online services on Monday after an Amazon Web Services outage caused widespread disruption.
DownDetector, a website that tracks online outages, said the AWS outage resulted in more than 11 million reports across all services. More than 2,500 companies received increased reporting of problems, according to the website.
The outage was another reminder of how consumers, businesses and even government organizations rely on AWS and its massive cloud to make their websites, apps and other online services work.
Here’s what you need to know about the AWS outage.
What is Amazon Web Services?
Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing services to millions of customers that include companies and organizations across various sectors such as technology, entertainment, government, education and financial services.
The cloud provider offers more than 200 services, enabling businesses to store data, host websites and access computing power. Businesses pay Amazon based on the consumption of these services so they don’t have to own and maintain data centers and servers themselves.
AWS captured about 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market in the second quarter of this year, ahead of its rivals Microsoft and Google, according to data from Synergy Research Group.
How did the outage affect businesses that rely on AWS?
Since businesses rely on AWS, the outage meant that users had trouble using various services, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite and Signal, according to DownDetector. People even ran into issues accessing Amazon products such as its Alexa smart speaker and Ring doorbell cameras.
Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, posted on social media site X that some users couldn’t access the company’s online platform because of the AWS outage but that “all funds are safe.”
Airlines such as United and Delta also experienced disruptions with customers reporting they couldn’t check their reservations or check in bags.
As companies dealt with the outage, Elon Musk took a jab at AWS by posting “X works” on the social media site he owns.
What caused the outage?
AWS started reporting issues shortly after midnight Pacific Daylight Time, stating it was looking into errors with its database service Amazon DynamoDB.
By 8:43 a.m. PDT, Amazon said it had “narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues that impacted AWS Services.”
“The root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers,” the company said on its health dashboard. More than 90 AWS services were affected by the issue.
Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity company NymVPN, told media outlets CNBC and CNN in a statement that “there’s no sign that this AWS outage was caused by a cyberattack — it looks like a technical fault affecting one of Amazon’s main data centres.”
“These issues can happen when systems become overloaded or a key part of the network goes down, and because so many websites and apps rely on AWS, the impact spreads quickly,” he said in the statement.
An Amazon spokesperson said it’s sharing updates on its health dashboard and didn’t have an additional comment.
Have AWS outages happened before?
Yes, AWS outages have occurred before, including briefly in 2023, because of different reasons, such as human error.
One major AWS outage happened in 2021, bringing down popular websites and services, disrupting the use of products such as vacuum cleaners and cat-food dispensers.
In 2017, an employee typed the wrong command during a debugging procedure, resulting in the shutdown of more servers than expected. People reported having issues with Venmo, Apple’s iCloud services and other apps.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
