Amazon Web Services Crash Disrupts Major Websites
Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud infrastructure provider, suffered a major outage early Monday morning that took down dozens of major websites and applications. The disruption began around 3:11 a.m. Eastern Time, centered in AWS’s critical US East region in northern Virginia.
The issue was traced to DNS problems affecting DynamoDB, the database service that supports many of AWS’s most-used applications. The Domain Name System (DNS) acts as the internet’s address book, directing traffic to the correct servers. When it malfunctions, even massive systems can go offline.
By 6:35 a.m., AWS announced that the issue had been “fully mitigated” and that most services were “succeeding normally.” But as the morning went on, the company reported continuing API and connectivity issues affecting multiple services, suggesting that recovery was still underway.
Major Platforms Knocked Offline
The outage spread rapidly across industries and countries. According to widespread user reports, websites and apps hit by the outage included:
Amazon’s own shopping site and delivery systems
Disney+ and other streaming services
Reddit and Snapchat
The McDonald’s app and the New York Times website
Venmo, T-Mobile, Lyft, and United Airlines
British government sites such as Gov.uk and HM Revenue and Customs
Banks and airlines were among the first to confirm disruptions. Lloyds Banking Group told customers that some online services were unavailable and asked for patience while engineers restored operations.
Inside Amazon, employees at warehouses and fulfillment centers were also affected. Internal systems went offline, forcing workers to wait in break rooms while managers coordinated through limited communication channels. Amazon’s Flex delivery drivers reported being unable to access payment systems through the company’s Anytime Pay app.
Even creative and tech platforms felt the effects. Canva, the popular design tool, reported elevated error rates due to “issues with our underlying cloud provider.” Meanwhile, users of the AI-powered search engine Perplexity could not access its services for several hours.
No Signs of Cyberattack
Despite the widespread impact, cybersecurity experts say there is no evidence that the outage was caused by a cyberattack. Instead, it appears to have been a technical fault in one of Amazon’s main data centers.
These issues can happen when systems become overloaded or when a key part of the network fails,” said Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity firm NymVPN. “Because so many websites and applications rely on AWS, the impact spreads quickly.
Mike Chapple, a professor of IT at the University of Notre Dame and a former computer scientist with the National Security Agency, noted that DynamoDB plays a crucial but largely invisible role in how the internet functions.
“It is one of the record keepers of the modern internet,” he explained. “Early reports suggest that the data itself was safe. The problem was with the system that tells other servers where to find their data.”
A Reminder of Cloud Dependency
Amazon Web Services controls about a third of the global cloud infrastructure market, far ahead of rivals Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Millions of businesses depend on AWS for everything from data storage to content streaming, e-commerce, and AI systems.
The outage reinforced just how fragile that centralization can be. When one provider goes down, the ripple effects are felt across entire industries.
This is not the first time AWS has experienced a failure. A major disruption in 2023 knocked numerous sites offline for several hours, and an even larger outage in 2021 halted Amazon’s own delivery network along with popular platforms worldwide.
Experts say the pattern highlights a growing problem: while the cloud offers scalability and speed, it also concentrates risk. “When a major cloud provider sneezes, the internet catches a cold,” Chapple said.
Lessons for Businesses
For companies that rely on AWS and similar platforms, the outage is a reminder that redundancy is essential. Even short disruptions can lead to revenue loss, reputational damage, and operational chaos.
To mitigate future risk, technology leaders recommend several key strategies:
Use multiple cloud regions to ensure service continuity if one goes down.
Continuously monitor dependencies such as DNS and database systems.
Create incident response plans that include provider-level failures.
Diversify cloud providers when possible to avoid a single point of failure.
Although AWS said the issue was contained and services have since returned to normal, the event will likely prompt renewed discussions across the tech industry about the dangers of centralized cloud control.
The Bigger Picture
The AWS outage followed another high-profile technology failure in 2024, when a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused a massive global disruption to Microsoft Windows systems. That event grounded flights, shut down hospitals, and disrupted banks, proving how a single point of failure can impact millions worldwide.
As companies race to adopt artificial intelligence, streaming, and other cloud-based services, reliance on a few tech giants continues to deepen. Monday’s outage showed that even the strongest systems are not immune to failure — and that a few minutes of downtime at a major provider can send shockwaves through the digital world.
For users, it was a frustrating few hours. For the tech industry, it was another wake-up call that resilience and diversification are no longer optional.
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