UPDATE: A significant outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has brought down numerous popular websites and applications, impacting millions of users globally. The disruption began at 11:49 PM PDT on October 19, 2023, and lasted until 2:24 AM PDT on October 20, 2023.
This outage has serious implications for everyday activities. Users reported being unable to access essential services, from ordering contacts at an eye doctor’s office to making payments on Venmo. Schools faced significant disruptions, with students unable to complete homework, while teachers struggled to grade assignments.
The list of affected platforms is extensive and includes major players like Duolingo, Roblox, Fortnite, Coinbase, Robinhood, ChatGPT, United Airlines, Canva, and Reddit. This incident underscores the vulnerability of digital infrastructure that relies heavily on a few providers like AWS.
In a press release, Amazon explained, “By 12:26 AM PDT, we determined that the event was the result of DNS resolution issues for the regional DynamoDB service endpoints.” The company acted quickly to mitigate the issue, achieving service recovery by 2:24 AM PDT. However, AWS noted that some internal subsystems continued to face difficulties, necessitating throttling of certain operations to ensure full recovery.
These outages highlight a critical concern in our increasingly digital world. As more businesses and services become reliant on cloud infrastructure, the potential for widespread disruption grows. This incident serves as a reminder of the fragility of technology that underpins much of our daily lives.
As users gradually regain access, attention now turns to the reliability of cloud services like AWS and the measures being taken to prevent future outages. Stay tuned for updates on this developing story as Amazon works to ensure stability across its platforms and services.
