Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud arm of Amazon, faced a major global outage on Monday, October 20, disrupting hundreds of popular websites, apps and online services. The outage affected platforms such as Snapchat, Fortnite, Alexa, Coinbase and several UK banks, IANS reported.
The disruption began early Monday in Amazon’s US-EAST-1 region, a key data hub that supports a vast number of cloud-based services worldwide. AWS said it detected “increased error rates and latency” across several of its services before beginning recovery operations.
By afternoon (UK time), the company reported “significant signs of recovery”, though many apps and users continued to face slow or failed connections.
According to user reports on Downdetector and other platforms, popular apps such as Snapchat, Reddit, Signal and Duolingo went down for several hours. The Alexa smart assistant stopped responding to commands, while gamers faced login failures on Fortnite and the Epic Games Store.
In the UK, Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland confirmed temporary service disruptions caused by the AWS outage. “We are sorry about this and ask customers to bear with us while we work to bring all our services back online,” a Lloyds spokesperson said.
AI firms including Perplexity and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, also confirmed technical issues linked to the AWS downtime. Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, said the company’s systems were “down due to an AWS issue” and that engineers were working to restore services.
Amazon says cause identified, not cyberattack
AWS engineers later identified the problem within its DynamoDB database and Domain Name System (DNS) components in the Virginia data centre. The company said the fault was not the result of a cyberattack, dismissing early speculation on social media.
“The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS service operations are succeeding normally now,” AWS said in an update. “Some requests may still be throttled while we work toward full resolution.”
Cyber expert Amro al-Said Ahmad from Keele University told foreign media that the issue appeared to be internal rather than external interference. “This was not a cyber-related attack but an infrastructural fault within AWS’s database system,” he said.
Global dependency on cloud services exposed
The incident has once again highlighted the world’s heavy reliance on a handful of cloud infrastructure providers. Millions of companies and government departments use AWS to host their websites, apps, and databases – meaning that a single regional fault can quickly cascade into global disruption.
AWS said it is continuing to monitor performance and clear backlogs from delayed requests. Most major services, including OpenAI, have since confirmed full or partial recovery.
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