Long-form summary
A significant outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted numerous high-profile websites and services, including Amazon, Snapchat, Disney+, Reddit, and Canva. The outage was attributed to an "operational issue" affecting over 70 AWS services, causing widespread disruptions in cloud-based games and crypto exchanges like Coinbase. AWS reported signs of recovery shortly after the incident, but some services, such as Reddit, continued to experience issues.
The outage also impacted government websites like the UK's HMRC and various banking services, including Lloyds, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland, leading to declined card transactions and inaccessible online banking. AWS identified the issue as related to DNS resolution in the US-EAST-1 region and worked on multiple paths to accelerate recovery. Despite significant recovery signs, some services faced delays due to a backlog of queued requests.
The incident highlighted the vulnerability of relying on a few major cloud service providers, as disruptions can have extensive ripple effects across numerous platforms.