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Storm damage

Global Internet Outage Blamed on Amazon Web Services Glitch

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

A sudden spike in websites and services failing has resulted in a global internet outage, with many of the world's biggest apps and websites affected, including Snapchat, Fortnite, and McDonald's. The issue began around 8am UK time, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) citing "increased error rates" and delays with "multiple AWS services." Engineers are working to mitigate the issue and understand its root cause. Professor Alan Woodward attributed the outage to a misconfiguration in DNS (domain name system) or BGP (border gateway protocol), highlighting the interdependence of online services and the potential for widespread impact from small errors.

Key Takeaways:

  • The internet outage was caused by a sudden spike in websites and services failing, resulting in widespread disruptions.
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) was experiencing "increased error rates" and delays with "multiple AWS services," including its Amazon DynamoDB database service and over 70 other services.
  • The issue was attributed to a potential root cause related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in the US-EAST-1 region.
  • Engineers are working to mitigate the issue and understand its root cause.
  • Professor Alan Woodward attributed the outage to a misconfiguration in DNS or BGP, highlighting the interdependence of online services and the potential for widespread impact from small errors.
  • Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN, warned of potential phishing emails and malware attempts during the outage.
  • AWS identified a potential root cause and is working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery.

Statistics:

  • 22,000 Snapchat outages were reported on Monday amid the AWS glitch (Source: Down Detector).
  • 6,925 Downdetector outage reports were recorded at Lloyds at 9:31am.
  • AWS's Amazon DynamoDB database service had been "degraded" and over 70 services had been "impacted" (Source: AWS).
  • The outage affected many of the world's biggest apps and websites, including Snapchat, Fortnite, and McDonald's.

Sources:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) service status page.
  • Professor Alan Woodward, visiting professor of computing at the University of Surrey.
  • Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN.
  • Down Detector.
  • AWS's service health update.

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