A significant service interruption at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the powerful cloud provider supporting a vast portion of the internet, brought numerous websites and applications to a halt for more than two hours on Monday. This incident serves as the latest stark reminder of how incredibly delicate our global technology infrastructure truly is.
This widespread outage, which impacted major banks, popular gaming platforms, and various entertainment services, began just after 3 a.m. Eastern time. By 5:27 a.m., Amazon reported that most affected sites and apps were back online, though they were still managing a large queue of pending requests.
Despite Amazon’s assurances, many reports of inconsistent service continued to surface on various platforms throughout Monday afternoon Eastern time.
Impacted services spanned a wide range, from popular communication tools like WhatsApp and critical government websites (including British tax services) to financial apps such as Venmo and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Even major news outlets like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal saw their online games and websites affected. The disruption extended to dozens of other companies and retailers, including Amazon’s own services, Hulu, Snapchat, McDonald’s, Ring doorbells, and the widely popular game Fortnite.
According to Down Detector, a service that monitors internet disruptions, over eight million reports related to Amazon Web Services had been logged by 9:45 a.m. Eastern, with a significant number originating from users in the United States and Britain.
By 11:43 a.m., Amazon revealed that their preliminary investigation pointed to an internal system, responsible for balancing network traffic, as the root cause of the widespread issues impacting numerous services in Northern Virginia.
Technology experts highlighted how this incident once again exposed the internet’s heavy dependence on a handful of major providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. When one of these giants falters, millions of users can be impacted. They recalled a similar, larger-scale internet outage last year, which was triggered by a flawed software update from a cybersecurity firm.
Thousands of AWS clients depend on its infrastructure for critical, data-heavy operations, ranging from streaming video and hosting web applications to securely storing vast quantities of digital information.
Harry Halpin, CEO of NymVPN, a virtual private network service, suggested that Monday’s problem likely stemmed from a technical glitch within one of Amazon’s primary data centers. However, he emphasized the inherent lack of transparency in cloud platform operations, noting that the true cause remains unknown unless Amazon chooses to disclose it.
Dr. Halpin, whose company provides VPN services to soldiers in Ukraine, recounted waking up to urgent emails from front-line personnel inquiring about the disruption. He pointed out that this vulnerability extends to numerous governments worldwide that also depend heavily on these cloud services.
He stated, “When an entire nation’s infrastructure is concentrated among a few providers, all based in the United States, and any component can fail at any given moment—whether due to malicious intent or simple technical errors—that presents an incredibly perilous situation.”
Dr. Halpin observed that the internet’s reliance on a limited number of providers has become normalized, but he stressed, “It’s simply not normal.”
Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a computer science lecturer at Keele University in England, explained that Amazon’s “us-east-1” region in Northern Virginia, the reported source of Monday’s issues, houses one of its largest data centers. While acknowledging that “for everyday operations, cloud computing works,” he cautioned that even a minor error, such as a flawed software update, can lead to a complete system collapse.
Media advocates quickly asserted that this outage, which also impacted secure communication apps like Signal and other digital tools, highlighted an urgent need for greater diversification within the cloud computing landscape.
Corinne Cath-Speth, head of digital for Article 19, a free speech advocacy group, issued a statement declaring: “The essential infrastructure supporting democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot remain reliant on just a few corporations.”
Interestingly, despite the widespread disruption, Amazon’s share price showed little movement in premarket trading, indicating that investors were largely unfazed by the incident. It’s worth noting that in the first half of the year, Amazon Web Services was responsible for nearly 20 percent of Amazon’s total sales and a substantial 60 percent of its operating profit.
Amazon’s cloud-computing arm boasts a vast global infrastructure. Opting for Amazon’s services allows clients to effortlessly scale their operations up or down as needed, bypassing the significant capital investment typically required for expensive hardware.
Rebecca Wright, a computer science professor at Barnard College in New York City, acknowledged that smaller businesses often benefit greatly from relying on cloud providers like AWS due to their specialized expertise. She noted, “While there are certainly trade-offs, I wouldn’t suggest that the answer is telling companies, “Don’t outsource your cybersecurity to a company that specializes in it.””
Mehdi Daoudi, founder of Catchpoint, an internet performance monitoring firm, highlighted a shift: two decades ago, many companies maintained their own data centers. Today, he explained, the majority depend on cloud services from giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Chinese providers. However, he added that the increasing costs of these services over the past few years have led some companies to consider reverting to their own internal infrastructure.
This recent outage could intensify calls for both private companies and government entities to prioritize cloud services hosted within their respective regions.
Following Monday’s disruption, Alexandra Geese, a German Member of the European Parliament, asserted that critical European data and digital infrastructure must be hosted within Europe itself, by European companies operating under EU jurisdiction.
She concluded that the outage served as a “stark reminder that Europe’s digital sovereignty is not merely an abstract concept, but a fundamental issue of security and resilience.”