Substantial Web Failure Impacts Many Sites and Mobile Apps

An extensive web outage has impacted dozens sites and apps worldwide, and users reporting issues connecting to the web due to difficulties at Amazon’s cloud computing platform.

The impacted apps encompass Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-operated services including its key e-commerce site and the Ring device manufacturer.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was affected as well as its branches Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with also reports of issues accessing the the tax authority site on Monday morning. Also in the UK, many Ring customers took to social media to state their doorbells were malfunctioning.

Just within Britain, accounts of issues on specific platforms ran into the tens of thousands for every service.

The company stated that the issue started in the Atlantic coast of the America at the cloud division, a division that supplies essential internet backbone for numerous businesses, who lease space on Amazon servers. AWS is the world’s largest online services platform.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the US (8am BST), the company announced “elevated error rates and delays” for the cloud services in a region on the east coast of the US. The cascading impact appeared to affect apps globally, with the problem monitoring service reporting problems with the identical platforms in different parts of the world.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a platform that monitors web disruptions, also reported a surge in issues on that morning, and numerous instances located in the Virginia area, the location of the eastern US data center where AWS said the issues started.