Amazon Web Services Outage Shuts Down Major Websites

Amazon Web Services, a leader in the cloud infrastructure market, reported a major outage on Monday, leading to the shutdown of many well-known websites.

AWS cited an “operational issue” affecting “multiple services” and said it was “working on multiple parallel paths to expedite recovery,” in an update at 2:01 a.m. PDT. Nearly 70 of its own services are affected.

Shortly after, AWS said it had seen “significant signs of recovery.”

“Most requests are now expected to be successful. We continue to process the backlog of requests in queue. We will continue to provide additional information,” he added.

As of 3:03 a.m. PDT, some services were restored. “We can confirm that global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered. We continue to work toward a full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share,” AWS said.

The Downdetector website said user reports indicated problems on sites including Amazon, Disney+, LyftTHE McDonald’s app, the New York Times, Reddit, Ring, Robinhood, Snapchat, T-Mobile, United AirlinesVenmo and Verizon.

Some United and Delta customers reported on social media that they were unable to find their reservations online, check in or drop off their bags.

Other social media users cited disruptions to cloud-based games including Roblox and Fortnite, while crypto exchange Coinbase said many users had been unable to access the service due to the outage.

Graphic design tool Canva said it was “experiencing a significant increase in error rates that impact Canva’s functionality.” There is a major problem with our underlying cloud provider.”

Generate AI search tool Perplexity is also affected. “The root cause is an AWS issue. We are working to resolve it,” CEO Aravind Srinivas said in an article on X.

This is not the first time that large companies have been affected by a technical problem; In July 2024, a faulty software upgrade by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike revealed just how fragile the world’s technology infrastructure is when it caused Microsoft Windows systems to shut down, creating millions of dollars’ worth of chaos and grounding thousands of flights. It also affected hospitals and banks.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.