Amazon Resolves Massive Cloud Outage That Disrupted Internet Services Worldwide
Amazon said late Monday that a major outage affecting its cloud computing network has been fully resolved, ending a day of widespread disruptions that impacted millions of users and some of the world’s biggest online platforms.
The issue, which began early Monday morning, caused outages across a broad range of internet services — including social media, gaming platforms, streaming services, and financial applications — underscoring how much of the digital world relies on a few major providers for online infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported that systems had begun recovering roughly three hours after the first signs of trouble, but full service wasn’t restored until around 6 p.m. Eastern Time. “Services have returned to normal operations,” the company said in an update posted on its AWS Health Dashboard.
AWS underpins much of the global internet, providing cloud hosting and backend support for government agencies, universities, and companies such as The Associated Press.
Cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple of the University of Notre Dame said that slow, uneven recoveries are common after large-scale outages. “It’s similar to what happens after a power outage — some areas come back online before others,” he said. “You can expect intermittent issues as engineers bring systems back up.”
Root Cause Traced to Domain Name System
Amazon said the outage stemmed from problems in its Domain Name System (DNS), which converts website names into the numerical IP addresses that allow browsers and apps to connect to servers.
According to DownDetector, which tracks online service interruptions, more than 11 million reports of issues poured in from users across 2,500 different platforms. Among the affected were Snapchat, the online games Roblox and Fortnite, brokerage app Robinhood, and streaming services including Netflix and Disney+.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and encrypted messaging app Signal also confirmed disruptions tied to the AWS outage.
Even Amazon’s own services were hit. Customers reported problems using Ring doorbell cameras, Alexa smart speakers, and the company’s retail website. Kindle users also said they were unable to download e-books during the disruption.
Education and Business Impact
The outage extended into the education sector as well. Many students and teachers were locked out of Canvas, a widely used online learning platform hosted on AWS.
Damien P. Williams, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said he couldn’t grade assignments or access course materials. “My students can’t reach their online content at all right now,” he said.
Canvas, used by roughly half of college and university students in North America — including all Ivy League schools — reported widespread access problems.
At the University of California, Riverside, students couldn’t take quizzes or submit assignments, while Ohio State University alerted its 70,000 students across six campuses that course materials might be temporarily inaccessible. By evening, both institutions confirmed that systems were back online.
Past Outages and Broader Concerns
This is far from the first time AWS has experienced problems. Notable outages have occurred in 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2023, with some lasting more than five hours and affecting airlines, automakers, and payment systems.
Monday’s trouble began around 3:11 a.m. Eastern, when AWS reported “increased error rates and latencies” in its US-EAST-1 region. Engineers identified “significant error rates” soon after and began rolling out fixes throughout the day.
In total, 64 internal AWS services were affected before operations stabilized.
Heavy Reliance on a Few Providers
Experts say the outage highlights how dependent the global internet has become on a handful of cloud providers — primarily Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
“When a company like Amazon experiences an outage, the ripple effects are enormous,” said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity specialist with the U.K.’s Chartered Institute for IT. “Most users don’t realize how many of their favorite apps rely on AWS until everything stops working.”
Burgess added that there was no indication of a cyberattack. “This looks like a straightforward technical issue,” he said. “The systems are complex, and sometimes things just break. The good news is these companies have established processes to recover quickly — usually within hours rather than days.”
