On Monday, Amazon announced that its cloud computing service was bouncing back from a significant outage that had caused a ripple effect of disruptions across the globe.
This service is integral to the operations of numerous apps, websites, and entities, including governments, universities, and businesses. According to Downdetector, a site that monitors online service disruptions, users encountered issues with platforms such as Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, and online broker Robinhood. Even the McDonald’s app faced difficulties.
Amazon’s own services were not spared from the chaos. Several users reported that their Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa smart speakers were out of commission. Meanwhile, others experienced trouble accessing Amazon’s website or downloading books to their Kindle devices.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) identified that the disruption primarily impacted services in its eastern U.S. region. The company assured users via its update platform that engineers were diligently working to diagnose the root cause of the problem.
By 5:27 a.m. EDT, AWS indicated substantial progress, stating, “We are seeing significant signs of recovery.” Approximately 30 minutes later, they noted, “We continue to observe recovery across most” of the impacted services.
A little more than a half-hour later, it said, “We continue to observe recovery across most” of the affected services.
The recovery was echoed by other companies reliant on AWS, with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase posting at 5:33 a.m. that some of its users gaining access to the service after it had been unavailable due to the AWS outage. “All funds are safe,” Coinbase had noted earlier.
Many sites and apps tracked by Downdetector were showing significant reductions in reported issues at about 6:15 a.m. EDT.
And at 6:35 a.m. EDT, AWS said, “The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now,” but said some requests might be slowed “while we work toward full resolution.”
Just before 7 a.m. EDT, that AWS site simply said, “No recent issues.”
Then, at 7:08 a.m. EDT AWS said it was “continuing to work towards full recovery” of various services.
AWS customers include some of the world’s biggest businesses and organizations.
“So much of the world now relies on these three or four big (cloud) compute companies who provide the underlying infrastructure that when there’s an issue like this, it can be really impactful across a broad range, a broad spectrum” of online services, said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at U.K.-based BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.
“The world now runs on the cloud” and the internet is seen as a utility like water or electricity as we spend so much of our lives on our smartphones, Burgess said.
And because so much of the online world’s plumbing is underpinned by a handful of companies, when something goes wrong “it’s very difficult for users to pinpoint what is happening because we don’t see Amazon, we just see Snapchat or Roblox,” Burgess said.
