A widespread AWS outage on Monday caused major disruptions across the internet, affecting millions of users and temporarily disabling a long list of popular platforms and services — from e-commerce and social media to financial apps and design tools.
The outage began early Monday morning and quickly escalated, impacting several high-profile platforms including:
- Amazon.com
- Prime Video
- Snapchat
- Canva
- Capital One
- Delta Airlines
- DoorDash
Media outlets, gaming platforms, and countless small business websites also reported slowdowns or complete inaccessibility.
A Flood of Frustration
Ironically, while many platforms went dark, users flocked to X one of the few unaffected to voice frustration, share error screenshots, and track the unfolding chaos.
The disruption affected everyday users and businesses alike:
- Snapchat users couldn’t refresh feeds or send Snaps.
- Prime Video subscribers were stuck in buffering limbo.
- Canva users lost access to design tools mid-project.
- Banks and airlines struggled with intermittent outages, affecting customer service and bookings.
The Root Cause – DNS & DynamoDB Failure
At the heart of the disruption was an internal failure within AWS’s ecosystem, specifically involving DynamoDB Amazon’s widely used NoSQL database service and a related DNS issue.
DNS acts as the internet’s address book, translating website names (like amazon.com) into machine-readable IP addresses. When this system failed within AWS, apps and services could no longer locate or retrieve the data they needed, causing a cascading breakdown across the internet.
The Cost of Downtime
By midday, early estimates suggested millions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue, especially for time-sensitive industries like media, marketing, and e-commerce.
This incident again highlights the risk of centralized cloud infrastructure and what happens when a single provider underpins a significant portion of the web.
AWS Response & Recovery
AWS engineers moved quickly to diagnose and isolate the issue, restoring partial service by early afternoon. A company spokesperson issued a brief statement:
“We’re investigating and will share more details soon.”
Amazon has not confirmed any signs of a cyberattack, instead pointing to an internal configuration error as the likely cause. A full root-cause analysis is expected in the coming days.
This marks yet another reminder of the fragility of hyper-connected systems. While cloud platforms like AWS offer scale and efficiency, they also pose a single point of failure for many global services.
Experts are now calling for greater redundancy, multi-cloud strategies, and contingency planning to avoid future internet-wide blackouts.
As of the latest update, most services are back online, though engineers are continuing to monitor performance and resolve residual issues. You can track real-time updates via the AWS status page
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