Major Web Disruption Affects Dozens Websites and Applications

A large-scale online failure has impacted dozens websites and mobile apps worldwide, and users noting troubles connecting to the web due to difficulties at the cloud computing system.

The impacted services encompass Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and the language learning app Duolingo, as well as a host of Amazon-owned services including its primary shopping platform and the Ring device manufacturer.

Across the United Kingdom, Lloyds bank was disrupted in addition to its subsidiaries the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were further notifications of issues reaching the the tax authority website on the start of the week. Also in the UK, multiple Ring users turned to online platforms to complain their home gadgets were not working.

In the UK alone, reports of disruptions on particular platforms ran into the tens of thousands for each app.

Amazon reported that the outage originated in the east coast of the America at Amazon Web Services, a unit that supplies crucial internet backbone for many firms, who rent out space on the company's servers. The cloud platform is the biggest global cloud computing service.

Shortly after the start of the day (PDT) in the United States (8am BST), Amazon confirmed “higher problem frequencies and slowdowns” for AWS services in a zone on the eastern US of the America. The ripple effect appeared to affect platforms globally, and the problem monitoring service indicating issues with the corresponding services in multiple continents.

The monitoring service Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks online failures, additionally noted a rise in issues on that morning, with many of them situated in the Virginia area, the site of the eastern US data center where AWS said the outage began.