NORTHERN VIRGINIA — A significant operational issue in Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud unit, a key pillar of the global internet, caused widespread outages today, disrupting services for millions of users worldwide and taking down major websites, apps, and gaming platforms.
The outage, which started this morning, was localized to the critical US-EAST-1 Region in Northern Virginia. According to AWS updates on its status page, the disruption was initially reported as “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple AWS services.
Latest Update on the Cause: In a subsequent update, AWS engineers confirmed they have identified the potential root cause of the service disruption. The issue appears to be related to DNS (Domain Name System) resolution for the DynamoDB API endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. The cascading effect of this failure then impacted other dependent AWS services. Engineers are now working on parallel paths to accelerate recovery.
Widespread Impact: The failure in the single, crucial AWS region had immediate ripple effects across the digital landscape:
- Amazon Ecosystem: Amazon’s own shopping website (Amazon.com), PrimeVideo, and smart assistant Alexa all faced significant connectivity problems, as reported by Downdetector.
- Gaming: Popular games including Fortnite, Roblox, Clash Royale, and Clash of Clans were down or experiencing severe login issues.
- Tech & Finance: AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and trading app Robinhood publicly attributed their downtime to the AWS issue. Financial platforms like PayPal’s Venmo and Chime also faced disruptions.
- Communication: Messaging app Signal and ride-share service Lyft confirmed their apps were also hit.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”
AWS, which competes with Google and Microsoft in the cloud market, provides essential computing power and data storage that underpins a vast portion of the global internet. The outage has once again highlighted the world’s immense dependence on a few core cloud infrastructure providers.
AWS and Amazon have not released a general statement, but the status page updates indicate that service mitigation and root cause analysis are actively underway.
