Our live coverage of the massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services outage has wrapped for the day. Please scroll through the posts below to learn about Monday’s developments.
Amazon says its systems are effectively back online
Amazon Monday afternoon said that its systems are mostly back online after a massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services outage brought down thousands of high-profile apps, websites and online platforms with it.
One Amazon product, Lambda, continued to return errors, but the company said the company is bringing that service back online. Lambda lets customers write new code for their products and platforms, and the service will automatically manage the infrastructure needed to deploy the code.
Total cost of the outage could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, expert says
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring firm Catchpoint, estimates the total financial impact of the AWS service disruption will be in the billions of dollars.
Already, the outage has resulted in delayed flights, prevented consumers from making purchases on certain apps or accessing financial services and caused issues for workers trying to do their jobs on Monday.
Amazon says its services are recovering ... again
After narrowing down the cause of its massive and ongoing internet connectivity issues, Amazon said early Monday afternoon that it has a plan in place to fix the system responsible for the outage, and it appears to be working.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is “now seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services,” the company said.
The problem appears to have stemmed from a system designed to monitor how much load is on the network. Amazon said it recently took additional steps to help that system recover. It also said it’s working on allowing companies to create new instances of its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a virtual machine that allows customers to build cloud-based applications, which Amazon had throttled to help fix the broader problems.
Reports of outages on the rise again for some companies
The number of users reporting outages is rising again for a series of companies and online services, according to Downdetector, a website that aggregates user-submitted reports of disruptions to online services.
Among them are Amazon, Delta, Snapchat, Google and Venmo, a mobile payment service owned by Paypal.
Over 10,300 users last reported Amazon outages, up from around 600 earlier but down from a the day’s high above 15,000. Over 7,400 users last reported Snapchat outages, up from around 4,000 earlier but down from the day’s peak above 22,000.
The internet is on the fritz again. Here's what seems to be happening now
After earlier reporting that the cause of a massive global internet outage had largely been mitigated, Amazon late Monday morning acknowledged that its cloud services that power some of the world’s most popular apps and sites are acting temperamental once again.
Despite early signs of recovery from the latest round of problems, Amazon said that the issues continue to create network connectivity wonkiness for its services that support thousands of apps and customer data.
The company doesn’t yet know the source of the issue, but it has narrowed down the possibilities as it continues to investigate.
Amazon said the latest bugginess emanated from its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) network, a virtual machine that allows customers to build cloud-based applications and quickly scale up or down the amount of computing needed to power them. Basically, a company can use EC2 to rent access to servers and computing power so it doesn’t have to invest in buying its own equipment, which can be extremely expensive technology.
The company said an internal subsystem designed to monitor how much load customers are putting on its EC2 network went haywire. In the meantime, Amazon is dialing back customers’ ability to launch new EC2 instances so it can work on mitigating the problem and help customers get back online.
AWS by the numbers
Monday’s service disruptions show just how widespread AWS is and the critical role it plays in supporting the web. And that’s resulted in a lucrative business for Amazon.
Here’s a snapshot of AWS’ reach by the numbers:
- Accounted for 37% of the global cloud market share in 2024 according to market research firm Gartner
- Generated $107.6 billion in revenue in 2024
- Runs on 6 million+ kilometers of fiber optic cabling
- Available in 38 geographic regions
- Notable customers include Disney, the US Army, Capital One, United Airlines, NFL
Amazon confirms fresh "connectivity issues"
Amazon Web Services has now issued a further update, stating in a post at 10.29 a.m. ET that it is once again experiencing network connectivity issues in the US.
AWS has said that it is seeing early signs of recovery and that it is continuing to investigate the “root cause”, which originated from its “EC2 internal network.”
For context: DynamoDB is a database that hosts information for companies, including customer data and EC2 is a kind of virtual server many companies use to build their online applications.
We’ll bring you more updates on this as we get them.
How you've been affected by today's outage: "My smart plugs became unresponsive"
Many of you have been in touch to let us know how you’ve been affected by today’s mass internet outage. Here are some more of your experiences.
ERIC:
CHRISTINA:
Catch up on what's happened as millions hit by global tech outage
If you’re just joining us, here is what you need to know after a mass internet outage caused by an Amazon Web Services fault.
• Reports of disruption to internet usage across apps and online platforms were flagged overnight. AWS issued a statement at 1.26 am ET confirming “significant error rates for requests.”
• Customers were unable to access their banking apps, gaming sites and social media accounts. Amazon-linked smart devices in the home were also affected.
• Some businesses took to X to reassure customers. Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase told users, “All funds are safe,” while artificial intelligence company Perplexity confirmed its service was down, adding, “We’re working on resolving it.” Both noted difficulties stemmed from an AWS fault.
• AWS kept customers informed via its website about the steps it was taking to resolve the issue. At just after 2 am ET, the service said it believed it had identified the root cause of the outage. “We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” it added.
• Flickr, PlayStation and Amazon itself were among the businesses forced to display ‘Error 404’ notices and messages of apology due to their inactivity. Those trying to access major UK banks Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland were told to try again later as it was not possible to process any requests.
• AWS then said, on its online ‘health dashboard’, that it was seeing signs of recovery.
• Tech expert Lance Ulanoff told CNN that AWS “sits in the middle of everything,” adding that all smart devices depend on “constant connectivity” so as soon as the source is removed, they fail.
• A further update on AWS’ health dashboard stated Amazon had “fully mitigated” the outage. It said that some sites were still experiencing delays processing requests, but largely everything was back up and running. The root cause currently remains unknown.
More than 1 million reports made by US users in two hours
This morning’s AWS outage, which the company said has since been “fully mitigated,” is expected to have affected millions of users worldwide.
Downdetector, a website that aggregates user-submitted reports of disruptions to online services, said it received 6.5 million global reports related to the outage, a spokesperson for the site’s parent company Ookla told CNN via email.
More than one million reports were submitted from the United States in the first two hours of the outage alone, according to Ookla, while more than 400,000 reports were filed from the United Kingdom in that time period.
Here’s a look at how the outage played out in certain regions according to Ookla’s data:
- United States: 1.4 million+ reports
- United Kingdom: 800,000+ reports
- Netherlands and Australia: 400,000+ reports
- France and Japan: 350,000+ reports
Why do these outages keep happening?
From banking services to social networks to airline booking sites to online shopping, the AWS outage disrupted thousands of services as millions of people worldwide – many of whom were on their way to work on the US East Coast – were unable to mobile-order coffee or access key apps.
The latest outage serves as a reminder of how fragile the internet’s backbone can be, even if the disruption is brief, and how reliant the world has become on these online services.
There’s “no sign” that this was a cyberattack, according to Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity firm NymVPN, adding that it “looks like a technical fault affecting one of Amazon’s main data centers.”
“The internet was originally designed to be decentralized and resilient, yet today so much of our online ecosystem is concentrated in a small number of cloud regions,” he said in a note. “When one of those regions experiences a fault, the impact is immediate and widespread.”
Jardin said “these issues can happen when systems become overloaded or a key part of the network goes down; and because so many websites and apps rely on AWS, the impact spreads quickly.”
Although AWS and its competitors are generally robust, the internet is a complex web of overlapping services that are only as reliable as their weakest code. The root cause of Monday’s outage remains unknown, but a service that converts friendly web names into IP addresses was unable to communicate with thousands of companies’ massive databases hosted by Amazon.
Read more here.
Elon Musk gloats as AWS services melt down
As nearly every corner of the internet was affected early Monday morning by the Amazon Web Services outage, Elon Musk was gloating that his X platform was not affected.
“Not us,” he responded to a post showing all the services and sites affected by the AWS outage, later responding and respiting memes making fun of Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk used the outage to promote X’s new chat function as users reported issues with encrypted messaging platform Signal.
“I don’t trust Signal anymore,” he wrote on X, adding in another post “The messages are fully encrypted with no advertising hooks or strange ‘AWS dependencies’ such that I can’t read your messages even if someone put a gun to my head. You can also do file transfers and audio/video calls.”
Global outage disrupted airlines' systems
We’ve now heard from United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
United said the global outage at Amazon Web Services had disrupted access to its app and website overnight. Some internal United systems were also temporarily affected, the company added in a statement.
“United implemented back-up systems to end the technology disruption and our teams are working to get our customers on their way,” the statement said.
A spokesperson for Delta, meanwhile, said the airline had experienced a small number of minor flight delays earlier this morning as a result of the outage but the company does not expect any more significant impact on customers.
How CNN readers have been affected by today's global outage
We’ve been asking you to share your experiences of today’s global internet outage, caused by a fault with AWS. Here are some of your responses so far:
CHARLES ANDERSON, NEW YORK:
JAMES W. FORT, WORTH, TEXAS:
TIFFINI, FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA:
RACHEL, NORTH CAROLINA:
CHARLIE SCHMIT IN MADISON, WISCONSIN, SAID:
You can tell us your experiences by using our form here.
Outage shows economies too dependent on a few cloud providers, expert says
Today’s huge global outage caused by an issue at Amazon Web Services has highlighted that businesses and consumers have become overdependent on a limited number of cloud providers, according to an expert.
AWS is a cloud computing provider that hosts many of the world’s most-used online services. Amazon said its customers couldn’t access the data stored in DynamoDB, a database that hosts information for companies, because of a problem with the Domain Name System – a kind of phone book for the internet.
“Amazon Web Services’ outage is a timely reminder of how deeply our economies now depend on just a handful of cloud infrastructures,” said Prof. Feng Li at the Bayes Business School at City St George’s University in London.
“Complex distributed systems operate at enormous scale and inevitably carry systemic risk. What stands out here though is the breadth of impact – from consumer apps to financial and public sector services – suggesting many organizations still underestimate the level of concentration risk in today’s digital infrastructure.”
Marek Szustak, an IT security expert, made a related point, saying that companies using the cloud should design their systems “so that a failure in one region or provider does not bring the entire business to a halt.”
Geographical distribution of resources and testing of emergency scenarios “should be the norm, not a luxury,” according to the IT security officer at eSky Group, which owns Thomas Cook, a British online travel agency.
So, what exactly went wrong Monday morning?
A massive Amazon Web Services outage temporarily brought down a significant number of popular internet sites and services – affecting banks, airlines, media, delivery apps and many other websites and apps.
AWS is a cloud computing provider that hosts many of the world’s most-used online services. In Amazon’s infancy, the company needed excess server capacity to ensure it had enough computing power to handle the massive amounts of traffic that came to its site during the holiday season rush. Amazon realized that during the rest of the year, it could use those servers to support other companies’ online needs, and out of that AWS was born.
Among AWS’ many offerings is DynamoDB, a database that hosts information for companies, including customer data. Amazon Monday morning said its customers couldn’t access the data stored in DynamoDB, because the Domain Name System – a kind of phone book for the internet – had encountered a problem. DNS is like an internet location engine, converting user-friendly web addresses like amazon.com into IP addresses – a series of numbers that other websites and applications can understand.
“Amazon had the data safely stored, but nobody else could find it for several hours, leaving apps temporarily separated from their data,” said Mike Chapple at University of Notre Dame. “It’s as if large portions of the internet suffered temporary amnesia.”
It’s not clear what caused the DNS outage, but it lasted only a few hours. By 6:35 a.m. ET, Amazon had fixed the DNS problem and recommended companies dump their cache – temporary storage files – to help speed up the restoration of their services.
Amazon said the outage continued to affect other AWS services, including EC2 – a kind of virtual server many companies use to build their online applications.
The company will likely conduct a postmortem and explain what went wrong with its DNS system in the coming days.
Banks in UK "coming back online" after services hit by outage
As we reported earlier, major UK banks were also impacted by today’s Amazon outage, with customers unable to access vital services.
We’ve now heard from Lloyds Banking Group, which said services were now coming back online, although still not fully resolved.
Tech expert says AWS "sits in the middle of everything"
We’ve heard today from a tech expert who told us that Amazon Web Services “sits in the middle of everything.”
Lance Ulanoff, editor at the technology publication TechRadar told John Berman on CNN News Central that AWS provides a space where businesses can essentially rent the services they depend on to operate, rather than building and maintaining those services internally, which is far more costly. “It’s like: ‘Why build the house if you’re just going to live in it?’” Ulanoff said.
Ulanoff explained that smart home devices, used by millions globally to do everything from monitor who is approaching their property to turning lights on and off, are not designed to work without the internet, despite how widely relied upon they have become.
While the mass outage is said to be fully mitigated, it is not yet clear what caused the disruption. Ulanoff saidthe reason for outages such as this one, or the CrowdStrike outage back in 2024, are often difficult to explain.
Snapchat and Canva users affected by outage
Snapchat users are still experiencing technical problems. We can bring you the latest from a spokesperson, who said: “We’re aware that some Snapchatters are having issues using the app right now – hang tight, we’re looking into it!”
Meanwhile, a Canva spokesperson said the online graphic design tool had seen a temporary service disruption due to an issue with its cloud provider.
“Service has now been restored for many users, and our teams are working closely with the provider to fully resolve the issue and restore access for everyone as quickly as possible… For updates, please visit status.canva.com.”