Major Global Outage Impacts Amazon, Snapchat, Airline Websites, and More. What to Know

Several popular websites and apps were disrupted early Monday morning after Amazon’s computing services unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) was hit by a major global outage. According to DownDetector, a website which tracks online issues and outages, websites and apps including Amazon, Snapchat, and Facebook were struck, while Delta Air Lines and United Airlines also experienced disruption in the U.S. At present, there is no indication that air travel will be impacted. The AWS outage made an impact in the international sector, too. In the United Kingdom, customers of banks including Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, and Halifax reported issues while attempting to log into their accounts. Although much progress has been made as AWS aims to get its services back up-and-running, there are still instances of disruption being reported across certain websites and apps.  “We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share,” reads a statement from AWS. Here’s what to know about the global outage and what has been impacted: What prompted the global online disruption? Many of the apps and websites affected by outages use AWS, an Internet-based cloud service for the tech giant Amazon. AWS first reported “increased error rates and latencies” across a number of its services in the early hours of Monday morning. At 4:26 a.m. ET, Amazon flagged a development of the widespread issue, stating: “We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region.” Per DownDetector, most initial reports of the outage in the U.S. were submitted by Internet users in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Almost half of all global reports came from the East Coast. Which popular websites and apps have been impacted? Gaming apps and websites were among those to experience significant disruption. Fornite, Roblox, and Clash of Clans all experienced a spike in connectivity issue reports, with users unable to login to their accounts. Social media apps including Snapchat, Facebook, and Reddit saw a sharp rise in reports of connectivity issues. At its peak, the Snapchat-related reports reached over 7,000 globally. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines experienced disruptions, per DownDetector, along with telecommunications provider AT&T. Microsoft, Duolingo, the dating app Hinge, and the Ring doorbell app all saw a spike in reports. The video-call platform Zoom also experienced technical issues, demonstrating the scope of the outage. In the U.K., bank customers reported issues logging into their accounts, with some receiving error notices while trying to access the designated pages on the banking websites and apps. The U.K. government’s tax and customs service, HMRC, also encountered issues as the official U.K. government services website, Gov.uk, was impacted. “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure,” a U.K. government spokesperson is quoted as telling Sky News. “Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.” What has Amazon said? Amazon engineers appear to have found the root cause of the issue and are working to resolve it, according to a service update shared after 5 a.m. ET. The issues at Amazon’s data point in Virginia may also be causing disruption to global access, AWS added. “Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1,” said AWS. DNS (Domain name system) is a tool used to translate domain names, such as Amazon’s website, into IP addresses for a computer to read and connect a user to the website.  DynamoDB is the API (Application Programming Interface) used by Amazon. How long is the outage expected to last? Some users may still be experiencing issues connecting to websites and logging into accounts on the affected services. Amazon has said that the “underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now” but “some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution.” Additionally, some services are “continuing to work through a backlog of events such as Cloudtrail and Lambda.but efforts towards a full resolution are ongoing.” “We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share,” reads a statement from Amazon. It has not been confirmed what prompted the initial outage.