Significant Web Disruption Affects Numerous Sites and Applications

An extensive web outage has disrupted dozens websites and applications globally, with users noting issues connecting to the web after problems at the web hosting system.

The disrupted platforms comprise the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, the messaging service Signal, and Duolingo, as well as several Amazon-managed platforms such as its primary shopping platform and the Ring doorbell home security firm.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, and additional accounts of issues using the HM Revenue and Customs website on that morning. Furthermore across the UK, multiple Ring users used social media to complain their doorbells were failing.

Just within Britain, accounts of issues on individual platforms totaled the thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the problem began in the Atlantic coast of the United States at the cloud division, a section that provides crucial web backbone for a host of firms, who lease capacity on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud computing service.

Just after late night (PDT) in the US (8am BST), officials reported “higher error rates and delays” for AWS services in a zone on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The ripple effect seemed to hit services worldwide, with the outage tracking website showing outages with the identical platforms in multiple continents.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a platform that reports on online failures, also reported a surge in problems on that morning, including several cases located in the state of Virginia, the site of the AWS US-East-1 zone where AWS said the outage began.