Is Your Favorite App Or Website Broken? It Could Mean AWS Is To Blame, And Here's Why

Tried logging into Snapchat or tuning into Apple Music today, only to be faced with error messages and lag? You're not alone. Many major apps and websites are down due to issues with Amazon Web Services (AWS), with a total of 6.5 million user reports of outages across 1,000 different companies. AWS is a cloud computing infrastructure that many other web services rely on internationally. The issue is believed to relate to an underlying problem with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), DynamoDB, a DNS failure, and "significant" API issues.

AWS is used by an immensely long list of companies, including Duolingo, Chime, Reddit, Ring, Canva, and many more. As a result, this means that the outrage is wide-reaching and impacts a massive section of the internet. This is reflected not only by pop-up messages and connection errors, but also by reports on Downdetector. AWS itself had 5,704 outage reports at its peak at 3:55 AM EST. Meanwhile, Snapchat received 22,664 reports at 3:45 AM EST at its peak, before dropping. 

According to the official AWS Health Dashboard, 71 services relating to Amazon's cloud infrastructure are impacted, with a further 37 having faced issues that are now resolved at the time of writing. Some of the services still facing issues include location services, VPNs, traffic mirroring, and the Amazon Bedrock. The issues are mostly faced in the US-EAST-1 area, which is associated with Northern Virginia. Despite that, figures on Downdetector indicate that some users are also facing issues in other areas of the United States, including those on the West Coast. Some issues are even being reported globally.

There isn't currently an exact point in time when the AWS outage is expected to be fixed. This means that we don't know for sure when the impacted websites and apps will return to functioning like normal. The best thing to do is to look out for updates from AWS directly, and for individual status updates for the services you're trying to access. For example, you can check if Reddit is down using their official status page.

Some websites affected by the AWS outage are already back up, with sites like Reddit sharing that they are operational with some "degraded performance" on their status page. Chime shares similar news on its status page, citing that an incident with a third-party outage has been resolved. However, other impacted platforms like Venmo are still facing difficulties, with a sharp peak of 5,738 reports on Downdetector after being otherwise mostly functional for a few hours.

The issues causing the outage are currently being investigated, with regular updates being shared on the Service Health page of the AWS Health Dashboard. The portal confirms that early signs of recovery are underway for some connection issues. Similarly, several mitigation measures have also been applied across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). However, the problem's root cause is still being investigated, with questions left lingering. This means that while a resolution is being worked on, there is currently no specific timescale for a fix.