{"id":319890,"date":"2025-10-21T00:51:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T00:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319890\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T00:51:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T00:51:38","slug":"amazon-cloud-outage-takes-down-many-online-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319890\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon cloud outage takes down many online services"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 Amazon says a massive outage of its cloud computing service<\/a> has been resolved as of Monday evening, after a problem disrupted internet use around the world, taking down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.<\/p>\n

The all-day disruption and the ensuing exasperation it caused served as the latest reminder that 21st century society is increasingly dependent on just a handful of companies for much of its internet technology, which seems to work reliably until it suddenly breaks down<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About three hours after the outage began early Monday morning, Amazon Web Services said it was starting to recover<\/a>, but it wasn\u2019t until 6 p.m. Eastern that \u201cservices returned to normal operations,\u201d Amazon said on its AWS health<\/a> website, where it tracks outages. <\/p>\n

AWS provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to some of the world\u2019s biggest organizations. Its customers include government departments, universities and businesses, including The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple said \u201ca slow and bumpy recovery process\u201d is \u201centirely normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

As engineers roll out fixes across the cloud computing infrastructure, the process could trigger smaller disruptions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s similar to what happens after a large-scale power outage: While a city\u2019s power is coming back online, neighborhoods may see intermittent glitches as crews finish the repairs,\u201d said Chapple, an information technology professor at the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Mendoza College of Business.<\/p>\n

Amazon blames domain name system<\/p>\n

Amazon pinned the outage on issues related to its domain name system that converts web addresses into IP addresses, which are numeric designations that identify locations on the internet. Those addresses allow websites and apps to load on internet-connected devices.<\/p>\n

DownDetector, a website that tracks online outages, said in a Facebook post that it received over 11 million user reports of problems at more than 2,500 companies. Users reported trouble with the social media site Snapchat, the Roblox and Fortnite video games, the online broker Robinhood and the McDonald\u2019s app, as well as Netflix, Disney+ and many other services.<\/p>\n

The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and the Signal chat app both said on X that they were experiencing trouble related to the outage.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s own services were also affected. Users of the company\u2019s Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa-powered smart speakers reported that they were not working, while others said they were unable to access the Amazon website or download books to their Kindle.<\/p>\n

Many college and K-12 students were unable to submit or access their homework or course materials Monday because the AWS outage knocked out Canvas, a widely used educational platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI currently can\u2019t grade any online assignments, and my students can\u2019t access their online materials\u201d because of the outage\u2019s effect on learning-management systems, said Damien P. Williams, a professor of philosophy and data science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.<\/p>\n

The exact number of schools impacted was not immediately known, but Canvas says on its website it is used by 50% of college and university students in North America, including all Ivy League schools in the U.S.<\/p>\n

At the University of California, Riverside, students couldn\u2019t submit assignments, take quizzes or access course materials, and online instruction was limited, the campus said.<\/p>\n

Ohio State University informed its 70,000 students at all six campuses by email Monday morning that online course materials might be inaccessible due to the outage and that \u201cstudents should connect with their instructors for any alternative plans.\u201d As of 7:10 p.m. Eastern, access was restored, the university told students.<\/p>\n

Record of past outages<\/p>\n

This is not the first time issues with Amazon cloud services have caused widespread disruptions.<\/p>\n

Many popular internet services were affected by a brief outage in 2023<\/a>. AWS\u2019s longest outage in recent history occurred in late 2021, when a wide range of companies \u2014 from airlines and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services \u2014 were affected for more than five hours<\/a>. Outages also happened in 2020 and 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first signs of trouble emerged at around 3:11 a.m. Eastern time, when AWS reported on its \u201chealth dashboard\u201d that it was \u201cinvestigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region.\u201d Later, the company reported that there were \u201csignificant error rates\u201d and that engineers were \u201cactively working\u201d on the problem.<\/p>\n

Around 6 a.m. Eastern time, the company reported seeing recovery across most of the affected services and said it was seeking a \u201cfull resolution.\u201d As of midday, AWS was still working to resolve the trouble.<\/p>\n

Sixty-four internal AWS services were affected, the company said.<\/p>\n

Just a few companies provide most internet infrastructure<\/p>\n

Because much of the world now relies on three or four companies to provide the underlying infrastructure of the internet, \u201cwhen there\u2019s an issue like this, it can be really impactful\u201d across many online services, said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at U.K.-based BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world now runs on the cloud,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n

And because so much of the online world\u2019s plumbing is underpinned by so few companies, when something goes wrong, \u201cit\u2019s very difficult for users to pinpoint what is happening because we don\u2019t see Amazon, we just see Snapchat or Roblox,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is that this kind of issue is usually relatively fast\u201d to resolve, and there\u2019s no indication that it was caused by a cyberattack, Burgess said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis looks like a good old-fashioned technology issue. Something\u2019s gone wrong, and it will be fixed by Amazon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There are \u201cwell-established processes\u201d to deal with outages at AWS, as well as rivals Google and Microsoft, Burgess said, adding that such outages are usually over in \u201chours rather than days.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Ortutay reported from San Francisco. Associated Press videojournalist Mustakim Hasnath in London and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Amazon says a massive outage of its cloud computing service has been resolved as of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":319891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[7060,64,2429,745,160396,57,59,712,160397,159980,7053,793,109738,158,61,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-319890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-alphabet","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-cloud-computing","11":"tag-computing","12":"tag-damien-p-williams","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-inc","15":"tag-internet","16":"tag-mike-chapple","17":"tag-patrick-burgess","18":"tag-power-outages","19":"tag-software","20":"tag-streaming-media","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-u-s-news","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115409419243554158","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}