Huge Outage Affects Major Websites, Apps

A major Amazon Web Services outage disrupted thousands of websites, retailers, and online platforms early Monday, including Amazon.com, Prime Video, and major gaming and social media sites. AWS, the world's largest cloud computing platform, first flagged an "operational issue" affecting 14 different services in its US-EAST-1 region in northern Virginia around 3:11am ET. A few hours later, the company reported "significant signs of recovery," though users continued to face delays due to a backlog, per NBC News.

The outage rippled across the internet, impacting cloud-based games such as Roblox and Fortnite, social networks like Facebook and Snapchat, major media outlets including the New York Times, the digital Ring doorbell service, apps Signal and Venmo, and even the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase. AWS' own automated support ticketing system was also offline, preventing customers from easily reporting issues.

The problem was traced to DynamoDB, Amazon's database management system. The AWS health dashboard said engineers were pursuing "multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery," per CNN. AWS, which stores vast amounts of customer data and underpins a wide array of digital services, is a cornerstone of the modern internet. The company reported $107 billion in revenue for the 2024 financial year, making up 17% of Amazon's total revenue, and has been expanding its investment in artificial intelligence products.