Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it has fully restored operations after a widespread outage disrupted access to thousands of websites and apps worldwide on Monday.
The disruption, which began around 07:00 BST, affected more than 1,000 major platforms including Snapchat, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Reddit, Fortnite, and Duolingo with users reporting login failures and loading errors. According to Downdetector, a global outage tracking platform, more than 11 million problem reports were logged during the incident.
By 23:00 BST, Amazon confirmed that all AWS systems had “returned to normal operations” after throttling parts of its network to resolve the issue. The company said preliminary findings indicated the problem was linked to “DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1,” referring to a core function that directs internet traffic to the correct servers.
Cybersecurity experts said the outage underscored the world’s heavy reliance on cloud computing giants. “This episode highlights how interdependent our infrastructure has become,” said Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey. “Even small, human-made errors in major cloud systems can ripple across millions of users globally.”
Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame, likened the disruption to a power grid failure: “When there’s a large-scale power outage, you bring things back bit by bit. The power might flicker a few times before stabilising.”
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, said the incident showed the risks of cloud dependency. “Everyone has a bad day today, Amazon had one,” he told the BBC. “The cloud allows incredible scalability, but when it goes down, it can take a lot of the internet with it.”
Critics also renewed calls for diversification in the cloud computing industry, which is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Cori Crider, head of the Future of Technology Institute, compared the outage to “a bridge collapsing,” warning that concentration of power in a few providers is “unsustainable” and poses risks to economic resilience and national security.
Ken Birman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said companies using AWS should also build better safeguards. “We know how to make these systems more resilient,” he said. “Developers must invest in stronger backup and failover mechanisms.”
The outage’s broader impact is still being assessed, with analysts noting potential legal and financial fallout. A similar disruption last year involving CrowdStrike led Delta Airlines to seek $500 million in compensation for losses caused by grounded flights and manual server resets.
Amazon has yet to provide a detailed technical report on Monday’s failure.
