Crypto exchange Coinbase, as well as games Fortnite and Roblox, were among those affected
AMAZON Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud provider, said its service had recovered after a widespread disruption on Monday (Oct 20) degraded services for a range of customers including government agencies, AI companies and financial platforms.
AWS has fixed an underlying problem with a regional gateway on the US East Coast that caused the disruption, the company said on its health dashboard just over three hours after its first update on the issue. Some users might see slower responses or increased error rates during the recovery, it said.
User complaints began spiking just after 7.30 am London time, according to Downdetector.
AWS was hit by an outage on Monday that took down several popular apps including Fortnite and Snapchat.
It was the first major Internet disruption since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction that hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports globally.
AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS competes with Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud services.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Perplexity, Coinbase, Prime Video hit by outage
AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood attributed their outages to AWS.
“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas had said in a post on X.
Amazon’s shopping website, PrimeVideo and Alexa were all facing issues, according to Downdetector.
SEE ALSO
Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, Roblox, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms that were down, while Paypal’s Venmo and Chime were some of the financial platforms that faced issues, the outage tracking website said.
Uber rival Lyft’s app was also down for thousands of users in the US.
Messaging app Signal’s President Meredith Whittaker confirmed on X that the company’s platform was hit by the AWS outage as well.
British firms affected
Britain’s Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were also facing issues, according to Downdetector’s UK website. The country’s tax, payments and customs authority HMRC’s website was also hit by the outage.
However, billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of social media company X, said that his platform continued to work. “X works,” he said, without commenting further.
