‘Half the internet’ goes down after Amazon cloud outage leaving millions unable to use Ring, Alexa, and banking apps – as experts say we ‘can’t rule out a cyberattack’

Major outage affects ‘half the internet’; Millions of people were unable to access sites such as Snapchat, Fortnite and Duolingo, as well as various banking applications.

The problem lies with Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing service that powers much of the infrastructure behind many websites.

The outage also affected popular Amazon services such as Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Ring and Amazon Prime Video.

The problems began shortly after 8 a.m., with more than 6,000 reports from affected U.S. customers, according to DownDetector.

According to DownDetector, which tracks internet outages, a further 1,600 users have been affected in the UK and the number is rising.

Jake Moore, ESET’s technology expert and security consultant, thinks the major outage was most likely caused by an ‘internal error’ at Amazon.

However, he says we cannot rule out a cyber attack at this stage.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: ‘While a cyberattack cannot be ruled out until AWS publishes its full post-incident report, there is no current evidence of hacking, data breaches or coordinated attacks.’

The problems began shortly after 8am (BST) on Monday, with more than 6,000 reports from affected US customers, according to DownDetector.

The outage also affected Amazon services such as Amazon.com, Amazon Alexa, Ring and Amazon Prime Video. Pictured, Amazon.com on Monday

Some of the platforms affected Monday morning include Amazon services like Amazon.com and Ring, as well as gaming platforms like Fortnite and Roblox

DownDetector receives network status updates from social media platforms, reports posted to the website, and other sources across the web.

‘Reports an incident only when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day’.

According to the site, the issue stems from problems at Amazon’s massive data center site in Northern Virginia (US-East-1), a critical hub for the global internet.

In total, 75 percent of reported issues come from us-east-1, with the rest coming from the other two US sites.

Professor James Davenport, an IT expert at the University of Bath, said it was ‘worrying’ that an outage in this region would affect banking practices in the UK, including Lloyds and Halifax.

‘UK banks should limit their use to the UK, or at least European regions, but they may actually be relying on some services that are depleted in US-East-1,’ he said.

‘Of course this is causing an impact at the moment, but it could mean that some customer data is being processed in the US, or possibly customer usage patterns can be inferred even if it’s not actual banking data. We don’t know.

‘This seems to indicate at least an unexpected dependency (quite easy to happen, but proper cloud auditing should have detected this if Lloyds itself was responsible; most likely a third party dependency that Lloyds had not protected against). Either way, I’m worried.”

Many users were worried about not being able to access Snapchat

A user learned of the outage after discovering rain sounds were not being played via Amazon Alexa

A further 1,600 users have been affected in the UK and the number is rising, according to DownDetector, which monitors internet outages

Several frustrated users took to X to discuss the outage.

‘Ring Dorbell/cameras haven’t been working for 13 hours, I can’t view history in the app and can’t log in to the website…’ one user tweeted.

Another wrote: ‘Anyone else’s Amazon Alexa not working? I can’t turn on the lights in the house because they are all controlled by Alexa…’

And someone joked: ‘Coming to Twitter to confirm I’m not the only one experiencing Snapchat outages’ and a GIF.

AWS provides cloud computing services such as servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development and security to individuals, universities, governments and companies worldwide.

When AWS goes down, other websites that use its services also go down; This is an embarrassing blow for the Amazon-owned platform; because these companies, universities, individuals and governments pay to use the services.

Major British banks such as Lloyds and Halifax are among the affected services, as well as GOV.UK, which is essential for visa application, passport renewal and tax management.

The technology giant acknowledged the issue AWS Health Dashboard pageIt says it’s an ‘operational issue’ affecting ‘multiple services’.

A frustrated Amazon Alexa finds they’re left in the dark amid outage

A user who went to X said his Ring doorbell wasn’t working

Scores of users flocked to X to discuss the outage with Snapchat, one of the most talked about apps

“Engineers responded immediately and are actively working to both mitigate the issue and fully understand the root cause,” AWS said.

It is not yet clear what the exact cause of the outage is; The Daily Mail has contacted AWS for comment.

There are many reasons for online outages, but most often the problem is caused by technical errors related to configuration.

However, other outages result from cyberattacks (attempts by criminals to damage or destroy a computer network or system).

Mr Moore said the bug appeared to have caused ‘a cascading failure’ across the platform, where the slowdown of one system disrupts others.

“This once again highlights our dependence on relatively fragile infrastructures with very limited backup plans for such outages,” he told the Daily Mail.

‘AWS owns approximately 30 percent of the global cloud infrastructure market, which makes up a large part of the internet.

‘Therefore, such an interruption could profoundly affect the entire world.’

PlayStation (pictured) and Xbox are included in the affected list because they are powered by Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing platform.

GOV.UK is required for visa application, passport renewal and tax management

As well as GOV.UK, major UK banks such as Lloyds (pictured) and Halifax are also among the affected services

‘With many global applications and websites heavily reliant on AWS for cloud hosting and data processing, outage is rapidly becoming widespread, creating a knock-on effect on many services.’

Dr D., senior lecturer in cybersecurity at Oxford Brookes University. Manny Niri thinks there’s a ‘serious failure’ in Northern Virginia (us-east-1).

“The massive outage across major services, from Amazon’s own platforms like Prime Video and Alexa to other services like Snapchat and Fortnite, appears to point to a serious failure in the core AWS US-East-1 region, from what we know so far,” he told the Daily Mail.

‘This does not appear to be just a minor software issue, but could involve a failure in a key part of the internet backbone, such as networking, storage or computing services required for dependent applications to run.’

Dr Niri continued: ‘This incident is a strong reminder that relying solely on a single cloud region is very risky for all affected businesses.

‘Companies should quickly assess their risk exposure, ensure they use multiple regions and failover systems, and provide robust offline backups.

‘While cloud computing is hugely beneficial, this outage highlights the need for better resilience, redundancy and clear communication between providers to reduce the impact of such issues and maintain customer trust.’