The internet experienced a significant shake-up on Monday when a disruption at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the powerful cloud provider underpinning a vast portion of online activity, knocked numerous websites and applications offline for over two hours. This incident once again exposed the delicate nature of our global technology infrastructure.
Beginning just after 3 a.m. Eastern time, the outage crippled various online platforms, impacting services for prominent banks, popular gaming sites, and entertainment providers. By 5:27 a.m., Amazon confirmed that most affected services were gradually returning to normal operation, though engineers were still addressing a backlog of requests.
The scope of the outage was extensive, taking down critical services such as WhatsApp, the official British government website and its tax services, the Venmo payment app, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and even games hosted by The New York Times. A long list of other businesses and retailers, including Amazon itself, Hulu, Snapchat, Ring doorbells, and McDonald’s, also reported widespread interruptions.
The immediate cause of the disruption remained unknown, with no initial signs pointing to a malicious cyberattack.
Technology experts quickly highlighted how this event underscores the internet’s significant dependence on a handful of dominant cloud providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. When one of these giants falters, the ripple effect can inconvenience millions globally. This incident echoed a previous, larger internet outage last year, which was triggered by a faulty software update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
AWS serves thousands of clients, handling their most intricate and data-heavy operations, from streaming video and powering web applications to securely storing massive volumes of digital data. Amazon’s expansive global cloud infrastructure enables companies worldwide to deliver their products and services seamlessly. By utilizing AWS, businesses gain the flexibility to scale their operations up or down as needed, avoiding substantial investments in physical hardware.
In its initial public statement, Amazon reported early Monday that 28 of its services, notably those located in the crucial ‘US-EAST-1’ region, were experiencing problems. Engineers were reportedly working tirelessly to contain the impact and pinpoint the root cause.
Rob Jardin, Chief Digital Officer at NymVPN, a virtual private network service, suggested that preliminary findings indicated a technical fault within one of Amazon’s primary data centers as the likely culprit.
Jardin remarked in a statement, ‘Outages of this magnitude starkly reveal our excessive dependence on centralized infrastructures. While the internet was initially conceived for decentralization and resilience, a significant portion of our online world is now concentrated within just a few cloud regions.’
Concerns were also raised by media advocates, who argued that the disruption, affecting secure communication platforms like Signal and other digital tools, demonstrated how the internet’s consolidation under a few tech giants could potentially jeopardize free speech.
Corinne Cath-Speth, Head of Digital for Article 19, a free speech advocacy group, stated, ‘When a single provider experiences an outage, vital services go down with it.’ She emphasized the urgent need for greater diversification in cloud computing, asserting, ‘The infrastructure supporting democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot afford to be reliant on merely a handful of corporations.’
Despite the significant disruption, Amazon’s stock price saw minimal movement in premarket trading, indicating that investors were largely unfazed by the incident. Notably, in the first half of the year, Amazon Web Services contributed nearly 20% of Amazon’s total sales and a substantial 60% of its operating profit.