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What we know as mass AWS internet outage hits most popular apps and sites
Hundreds of hugely popular websites and apps were not working on Monday morning after a widespread internet outage.
According to online outage tracker Downdetector, large numbers of services and platforms experienced issues, including industries stretching from home security, banking, e-commerce and gaming.
The outage hit users on Monday and appears to be linked to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides many companies with servers to run their apps and websites.
Downdetector said it had received four million reports of problems from its users across the world, affecting more than 500 companies.
What sites and apps are down?
According to Downdetector, dozens of popular sites are having problems. Here is a list of those affected:
Snapchat
Slack
Amazon
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa’s website was down because of the outage. (PA)
Roblox
Wordle
Ring
Duolingo
Halifax
Lloyds Bank
Sky
PlayStation
The website for PlayStation was affected. (PA)
BT
EE
HMRC
Gov.uk
Vodafone
Signal
Virgin Media
Bank of Scotland
Zoom
Clash Royale
Clash of Clans
Fortnite
Canva
PokemonGo
Peloton
Rocket League
What has happened?
Thousands of web users began reporting issues to Downdetector from about 7.30am (2.30am ET) onwards on Monday.
Some companies reported their problems were caused by an issue with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
In its first post about the issue on its health status page at 8.11am (3.11am ET), AWS said it was “investigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services”.
Later, at 10.01am (5.01am ET), it said it had “identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region”.
Then, at 10.22am (5.22am ET), it said: “We have applied initial mitigations and we are observing early signs of recovery for some impacted AWS Services. During this time, requests may continue to fail as we work toward full resolution.”
At 10.27am (5.27am ET), it said: “We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information.”
At 12.35pm (7.35am ET), it said the “underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated” and that “most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now”.
DNS stands for Domain Name System, essentially the phone book for the internet, which translates website names into numbers that can be understood by computers. If there are issues with DNS, it can mean browsers struggle to find affected websites.
What have the companies affected said?
An error message posted on Halifax’s website read: “Sorry, we’re unable to process your request at the moment. We’re currently having some technical problems.”
A HMRC spokesperson said: “We’re aware that customers are having problems accessing our online services, as part of global issues affecting Amazon Web Services. We’re working urgently with them on this matter.
“Our phonelines are currently busy as a result, so for anything that isn’t urgent we recommend calling at a later time.”
The website for the Halifax bank went down. (PA)
They said later: “Customers can access our online services as normal, as the global issue which affected Amazon Web Services has now been resolved. We thank customers for their patience while the problem was being resolved.”
A Lloyds Bank spokesperson said at lunchtime: “We are sorry for the issues affecting customers this morning, we are seeing services coming back online and continue to work to see that happens as quickly as possible.”
What is Amazon Web Services?
Part of Amazon’s cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides the infrastructure for the websites and apps of millions of companies.
According to internet analytics experts BuiltWith, more than 76 million websites use AWS, meaning it essentially powers much of the internet.
It has the biggest share of its market, but competes against the likes of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Companies rent computers and servers from AWS instead of building their own data hubs, making it a huge money spinner for Amazon – last year, AWS had a revenue of $107.6bn (£80.2bn).