A problem at Amazon\u2019s cloud computing service disrupted internet use around the world Monday through to Tuesday, taking down dozens of online services, including social media site Snapchat, the Roblox and Fortnite video games and chat app Signal.<\/p>\n
About three hours after the outage began, Amazon Web Services said it was starting to recover from the problem. AWS provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to some of the world\u2019s biggest organisations. Its customers include government departments, universities and businesses, including The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Amazon pinned the outage on issues related to its domain name system, which converts web addresses into IP addresses so websites and apps can load on internet-connected devices.<\/p>\n
On DownDetector, a website that tracks online outages, users reported issues with Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, online broker Robinhood, the McDonald\u2019s app and many other services.<\/p>\n
In New Zealand, apps like TVNZ+ and Sky’s on demand services experienced issues. <\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a massive outage breaks the internet, weather warnings and watched in force, more allegations levelled against Prince Andrew. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
“Kia ora, if you have had trouble watching On Demand this evening, thanks for bearing with us,” Sky said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“There is currently an Amazon Web Services global issue that\u2019s affecting On Demand viewing for New Sky Box, Sky Pod, Sky Go, and Neon customers.” <\/p>\n
Coinbase and Signal both said on X that they were experiencing issues related to the outage.<\/p>\n
Even Amazon\u2019s own services were not immune. Users of the company\u2019s Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa-powered smart speakers reported that they were not working, while others said they were unable to access the Amazon website or download books to their Kindle.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time issues with Amazon cloud services have caused widespread disruptions.<\/p>\n
Many popular internet services were affected by a brief outage in 2023. AWS\u2019s longest outage in recent history occurred in late 2021, when a wide range of companies \u2014 from airlines and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services \u2014 were affected for more than five hours. Outages also happened in 2020 and 2017.<\/p>\n
The first signs of trouble emerged at around 3.11am Eastern time, when AWS reported on its \u201chealth dashboard\u201d that it was \u201cinvestigating increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-EAST-1 Region\u201d.<\/p>\n
Later, the company reported that there were \u201csignificant error rates\u201d and that engineers were \u201cactively working\u201d on the problem.<\/p>\n
Around 6am Eastern time, the company reported seeing recovery across most of the affected services and said it was working on a \u201cfull resolution\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sixty-four internal AWS services were affected, the company said. Amazon referred requests for comment to its AWS dashboard.<\/p>\n
Cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple said \u201ca slow and bumpy recovery process\u201d is \u201centirely normal\u201d.<\/p>\n
As engineers roll out fixes across the cloud computing infrastructure, the process could trigger smaller disruptions, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s similar to what happens after a large-scale power outage: While a city\u2019s power is coming back online, neighbourhoods may see intermittent glitches as crews finish the repairs,\u201d said Chapple, an information technology professor at the University of Notre Dame\u2019s Mendoza College of Business.<\/p>\n
Because much of the world now relies on three or four companies to provide the underlying infrastructure of the internet, \u201cwhen there\u2019s an issue like this, it can be really impactful\u201d across many online services, said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at UK-based BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world now runs on the cloud,\u201d and the internet is seen as a utility like water or electricity, Burgess said.<\/p>\n
And because so much of the online world\u2019s plumbing is underpinned by a handful of companies, when something goes wrong, \u201cit\u2019s very difficult for users to pinpoint what is happening because we don\u2019t see Amazon, we just see Snapchat or Roblox,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news is that this kind of issue is usually relatively fast\u201d to resolve, and there\u2019s no indication that it was caused by a cyberattack, Burgess said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis looks like a good old-fashioned technology issue. Something\u2019s gone wrong, and it will be fixed by Amazon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There are \u201cwell-established processes\u201d to deal with outages at AWS, as well as rivals Google and Microsoft, Burgess said, adding that such outages are usually fixed in \u201chours rather than days\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A problem at Amazon\u2019s cloud computing service disrupted internet use around the world Monday through to Tuesday, taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[138,42,43,145,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-90851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}