Significant Web Disruption Impacts Dozens Websites and Applications

A large-scale online failure has affected dozens online platforms and apps worldwide, and users noting problems getting online following issues at the cloud computing platform.

The impacted services include Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as multiple Amazon-owned services including its main retail platform and the Ring security device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was disrupted as well as its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and also reports of issues accessing the HMRC website on Monday morning. Additionally in Britain, several Ring customers took to social media to complain their security devices were failing.

Solely in the United Kingdom, reports of disruptions on specific platforms totaled the tens of thousands for every service.

Officials confirmed that the outage originated in the Atlantic coast of the US at the cloud division, a division that provides essential online infrastructure for many firms, who rent out space on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the most extensive cloud computing service.

Just after midnight (PDT) in the US (8 in the morning BST), Amazon confirmed “higher error rates and slowdowns” for the cloud services in a area on the eastern US of the US. The widespread consequence appeared to hit platforms worldwide, and the problem monitoring service reporting problems with the same sites in various regions.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that monitors web disruptions, further indicated a surge in issues on that morning, including several cases located in the Virginia area, the region of Amazon’s US-East-1 region where the company stated the outage began.