A major outage at Amazon cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), caused widespread disruption to apps, websites and online services across the globe on Monday, reigniting concerns about the world’s dependence on a handful of technology giants to run critical infrastructure.
The glitch, which began in the early hours of the morning on the US east coast, quickly rippled across continents. Popular platforms including Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo were among those affected, alongside Amazon’s own retail site and its Ring doorbell service. In the UK, banking services at Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were hit, while HM Revenue and Customs’ website also experienced problems.
According to Downdetector, which tracks internet outages, more than 8.1 million reports of disruption were filed worldwide, including 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in the UK and 418,000 in Australia. In Britain alone, tens of thousands of users reported issues with individual apps. Other services impacted globally included Wordle, Coinbase, Slack, Pokémon Go, Epic Games, PlayStation Network and Peloton.
By 10.30am UK time, Amazon said it was “seeing significant signs of recovery”, though the company later admitted it was still experiencing “elevated errors” across multiple services. In an update issued at 7am Pacific time (3pm UK time), AWS confirmed “significant API errors and connectivity issues” and said it was investigating the cause. To stabilise the system, the company imposed limits on the number of requests that could be made on its platform.
The disruption originated in AWS’s US-East-1 region, based in Virginia, which hosts a large cluster of the company’s data centres. Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, which monitors internet performance, reported a surge in problems in the area. Amazon later ruled out a cyber-attack, attributing the outage to an internal subsystem responsible for monitoring its load balancers, which manage traffic across servers. The company’s DynamoDB database system was also cited in status updates.
Steven Murdoch, professor of security engineering at University College London, said the incident appeared to be the result of “some accident within AWS, rather than being the result of any malicious intent”.
The outage has renewed scrutiny of the concentration of power in the cloud computing market, where Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominate. Experts warned that the reliance of governments, businesses and individuals on a small number of providers poses a systemic risk.
Dr Corinne Cath-Speth, head of digital at human rights organisation ARTICLE 19, said: “We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism and secure communications cannot be dependent on a handful of companies.”
Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Technology Institute, a thinktank advocating for European technological sovereignty, added: “The UK can’t keep leaving its critical infrastructure at the mercy of US tech giants. With Amazon Web Services down, we’ve seen the lights go out across the modern economy, from banking to communications.”
Madeline Carr, professor of global politics and cybersecurity at University College London, said it was “hard to disagree” with warnings about over-reliance on a few firms. “The counter argument is that it’s these large hyper-scaling companies that have the financial resources to provide a secure, global and resilient service. But most people outside those companies would argue that is a risky position for the world to be in.”
The UK government confirmed it was in contact with Amazon over the outage. A spokesperson 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.”
The disruption has also prompted political scrutiny. The House of Commons Treasury Committee has written to the economic secretary to the Treasury, Lucy Rigby, questioning why Amazon has not yet been designated a “critical third party” to the UK’s financial services sector. Such a designation would bring the company under financial regulatory oversight.
Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier noted that Amazon had previously told MPs that financial services customers were using AWS to support their “resilience” and that the platform offered “multiple layers of protection”.
The incident follows last year’s “largest outage in history”, when a botched software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike crippled Microsoft’s Windows operating system, affecting airports, healthcare services and businesses worldwide.
Monday’s events have once again highlighted the fragility of the digital infrastructure underpinning modern life, and the risks posed by entrusting it to a small number of global corporations.
