Amazon web outage LIVE as Ring, Alexa, Snapchat, Fortnite and more crash
Internet outage site DownDetector has received reports from thousands of frustrated internet users after the issue, appearing to originate in the US, quickly spread worldwide
by Ryan Fahey, Liam Doyle · The MirrorAmazon's web service platform, AWS, which underpins thousands of popular apps is down - creating errors for users of Snaptchat, Fortnite and Duolingo, and many, many more.
Shortly after 8am BST, 12am in the US, outage tracking site DownDetector said it had logged 6,000 reports from affected customers, with reports spanning dozens of services around the world.
The issue appears to have stemmed from a single AWS centre in the US, US-EAST-1, the service provider's largest, and people have been advised to continue to retry any failed requests.
22:49Anders Anglesey
Web services still recovering, says Amazon
AWS said in another update: "We continue to observe recovery across all AWS services."
16:12Anders Anglesey
Snapchat investigating issue
Snapchat announced on X/Twitter earlier today that it would investigate issues with the platform.
15:24Anders Anglesey
Customers face 'devastating' impact after banks affected by outage
The consumer group Which? has said customers face "devastating" impacts after banks were affected by the outage.
Its money editor Jenny Ross said: "Perhaps most worrying are reports that some of the UK's biggest banks are out of action, with customers unable to make payments or access their banking apps.
"Technical issues like these can be devastating for people who risk missing important bill payments, finding themselves unable to pay for essential services or going overdrawn – issues which could come with knock-on effects like late payment or overdraft penalties, or affect their ability to get credit."
14:57Liam Doyle
AWS competitor teases 'guess who isn't down'
Hetzner, an AWS cloud services firm that is a key competitor to the web service provider in Germany, has taken to Twitter to troll the company.
In a tweet, the company said:
14:23Liam Doyle
Complaints fall - but issues remain
According to DownDetector, the number of reports is failing as we enter the afternoon, with graphs on the site showing a general decline in people complaining about issues.
That said, there are still reports being submitted in the UK, meaning that problems on AWS-based sites and apps are persisting.
13:44Liam Doyle
More than 1,000 companies impacted, DownDetector estimates
DownDetector, which has been tracking the number of companies impacted by the AWS outage and the number of individual complaints, has said that more than 1,000 of the former were affected.
The company told the BBC that more than 6.5 million reports were submitted, with Brits accounting for more than 800,000.
13:26Liam Doyle
Fixes continue as AWS breaks through another obstacle
AWS has confirmed in its latest update that engineers have now "recovered processing of SQS queues", meaning they are able to process a "backlog of SQS messages in Lambda queues".
13:11Liam Doyle
Elon Musk's two-word response to the AWS outage
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has now responded to the AWS outage, saying in a two-word post to his social media platform X:
12:50Liam Doyle
As many services return, problems for some are just starting
While banking and some other services are starting to see an improvement in their services as AWS continues to fix this morning's outage, the trouble is just starting for others.
Reddit, the "front page of the internet" has said its infrastructure is currently experiencing "degraded performance", with the site saying it is "experiencing an elevated level of errors".
Developers said they had implemented a fix at around 12.10pm, and have not specified whether the issues are AWS-related.
12:21Liam Doyle
Banking services back online - Lloyds
Lloyds Banking group, the organisation that owns Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, has said its services have started coming back online.
12:00Liam Doyle
Outage is 'extremely significant' says cybersecurity expert as issues remain
AWS insisted in its latest update that the service is approaching full functionality again, but the incident has some profound lessons to teach, experts have said.
Professor Oli Buckley, an expert in Cyber Security at Loughborough University has said the outage is "extremely significant" as it has exposed just how many key services are reliant on just one provider. He said: "This outage is extremely significant because AWS is a backbone for much of the internet’s infrastructure, it’s a really stark reminder of how many well known services rely on a handful of providers and services themselves.
"For example, CloudFlare had a couple of outages in the last few years that cascaded through the internet making a variety of things unavailable. When a core region of such a big service falters, the knock-on effect is broad, consumer apps, enterprise systems, even banking and national services may feel the impact.
"There’s nothing to suggest this is any kind of attack, in fact it feels like a regular operational outage at the moment. It does serve as an excellent reminder that these things can impact even the biggest tech companies in the world, and contingency planning is really important (even if it’s less sexy and exciting than cyber attacks, espionage and intrigue).
"It’s a reminder that we need to think about resilience, and not just defences; systems still need to be able to recover quickly, communicate clearly and keep the essential services running."
11:53Liam Doyle
PlayStation's website is down, but PS Network retains functionality
Gaming has taken a hit in today's outage, with some online services like Fortnite out for the count while AWS was knocked down.
But, while PlayStation's website was among those impacted by the issue, the PS Network has continued to function as normal, with all services up and running, according to its status page.
11:43KEY EVENT
AWS fixes 'underlying issue' as operations 'succeeding normally'
AWS engineers have fixed the "underlying DNS issue" causing the outages today, the service has said in its latest update, with most of its operations now "succeeding normally".
The update states: "The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now. 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.
"While most operations are recovered, requests to launch new EC2 instances (or services that launch EC2 instances such as ECS) in the US-EAST-1 Region are still experiencing increased error rates. We continue to work toward full resolution. If you are still experiencing an issue resolving the DynamoDB service endpoints in US-EAST-1, we recommend flushing your DNS caches. We will provide an update by 4:15 AM, or sooner if we have additional information to share."
11:30Liam Doyle
Government 'in contact' with AWS
A government spokesperson has confirmed they are in contact with AWS following the outage.
They said: “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure. Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.”
Gov.uk sites have been affected across the board this morning, including critical services like HMRC.
11:25KEY EVENT
Full list of every service affected as outage persists
While AWS has noted "significant improvement" in its services this morning, sites around the world continue to report issues.
Dozens of apps and websites are still largely out for the count, including critical services from banks and the government. We've put together a list of some of the most significant platforms affected today.
11:12KEY EVENT
AWS status downgraded again as recovery continues
AWS has downgraded its impact rating to "impacted" as servers continue to see recovery, with the service's portal stating that global services reliant on the impacted US-EAST-1 having recovered.
The latest update reads: "We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services. We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered. We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share."
11:09Liam Doyle
Lloyds says 'we're sorry' as it investigates outage
Lloyds has become the latest bank to issue an apology following today's outage chaos, saying in a statement that it is investigating the problems with its services.
A spokesperson for the bank said: "You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today," it said in a post on X.
"We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this."
10:59Liam Doyle
HMRC 'working urgently' to resolve issues
HMRC has said in a statement that it is working "urgently" to resolve issues caused by the AWS outage, adding they have left the government office's phonelines busy.
An 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.”
10:51Liam Doyle
Bank of Scotland asks 'please bear with us' as outage impacts online banking
Bank of Scotland has asked its customers to "please bear with us" as the AWS outage prompts some to complain about a lack of access to their online banking.
A spokesperson said: "You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today. We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this."
10:40KEY EVENT
AWS seeing 'significant signs of recovery' as outage status downgraded
AWS has said in its latest update that there are "significant signs of recovery" in its US EAST region, and has subsequently downgraded the disruption level to "degraded".
The latest update states: "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."
10:38KEY EVENT
More than four million reports sent following outage
More than four million reports have been sent worldwide, according to DownDetector, which told the BBC in a statement that this was more than double the approximately 1.8 million it may receive on a given weekday.
A spokesperson said: "At 06:56 UTC (02:56 AM EDT) users started reporting issues with AWS, in particular with the US East 1 region. As of 09:50 AM BST (08:50 UTC), over 500 companies, across all of our 66 sites, are reporting issues."
10:30Liam Doyle
Outage hits multiple doorbell security apps, prompting security fears
The outage has also impacted the support for multiple doorbell security apps, leaving users with security concerns.
One social media user remarked on X, formerly Twitter: "Blink cameras are also down so let’s just hope nobody tries to break in and murder us until Amazon web services can get their f****** act together lmfao."
10:21Liam Doyle
Halifax issues statement after AWS outage
Halifax has issued a statement after the AWS outage this morning, saying that "some of our services" have been hit.
A spokesperson said: "You may have seen reports of issues with Amazon Web Services affecting a number of websites and apps across the UK today. We know this is impacting some of our services right now. We're sorry about this. Please bear with us as we investigate this."
10:14Liam Doyle
Government sites among those knocked out
People struggling to access government services today will find they have also been impacted by the AWS outage, which appears to have taken out several pages.
10:10KEY EVENT
Massive outage hitting most major UK banks
Today's outage has impacted banking services around the world, including most major UK high street banks.
Impacted banks include Halifax, Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, HSBC and more, according to DownDetector.
10:03KEY EVENT
AWS identifies 'potential root cause' as it recommends customers 'continue to retry'
AWS has released an update on the outage, revealing in the latest statement that a "potential root cause" of the issue is an issue "with DNS resolution".
AWS representatives said: "We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1.
"We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues.
"During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:45 AM PDT (10.45am BST)."
10:01Liam Doyle
Outage impacts vast cryptocurrency market
The outage has also impacted cryptocurrency traders, some of whom are noting the irony of exchanges of the "decentralised" currency being taken out by a centralised system.
09:56Liam Doyle
Leon customers unable to order coffee
Coffee fans have now been impacted by the outage, with Leon saying in a note to its customers that the "worldwide IT issue" has prevented people from ordering coffee.
They issued a statement to subscription holders: "We’re so sorry about the technical issues today and sadly this is across our whole estate as it’s a worldwide IT issue with many systems affected, not only in LEON.
"We’re really sorry for the frustrations it’s caused and absolutely not what anyone needs on Monday morning. Our restaurant teams are honouring this, please just queue at the till and show your Roast Rewards subscription invoice or app if it’s showing and they’ll process orders manually.
"We know this isn’t ideal but they’ll be trying their very best to keep service going."
09:52Liam Doyle
Social media users react to outage
Internet users have taken to social media platforms to voice their frustration after the AWS outage "took half of the internet with it".
09:45KEY EVENT
AWS issues follow 'error rates and latencies' at critical US infrastructure Site
AWS has confirmed that today's issues were preceded by an operational issue in the US-East-1 Region, with "significant error rates" made to a specific endpoint.
The service's moiutoring page states: "We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases.
"Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM (10am BST)."
US East is the largest region of AWS, the largest cloud provider.