Major Web Failure Hits Many Sites and Mobile Apps

A large-scale web failure has affected dozens online platforms and apps around the world, and users reporting problems getting online due to difficulties at Amazon’s cloud computing platform.

The affected platforms include the social media app Snapchat, the gaming platform Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to several Amazon-managed operations including its primary shopping website and the Ring home security firm.

In the UK, the financial institution Lloyds was impacted as well as its branches the bank Halifax and Bank of Scotland, with further notifications of issues accessing the HMRC website on that morning. Also in the UK, several Ring device owners took to social media to report their security devices were failing.

Solely in the United Kingdom, notifications of problems on particular applications totaled the thousands for each platform.

Officials confirmed that the issue originated in the Atlantic coast of the America at the cloud division, a division that offers essential online backbone for many firms, who lease resources on Amazon servers. The cloud platform is the biggest global cloud computing system.

Just after midnight (PDT) in the America (8am BST), the company announced “higher problem frequencies and slowdowns” for Amazon's platforms in a zone on the eastern US of the America. The widespread consequence appeared to hit apps worldwide, and the Downdetector site reporting outages with the corresponding services in various regions.

Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a tool that reports on web disruptions, further indicated a surge in issues on the start of the week, and numerous instances situated in Virginia, the region of the AWS US-East-1 zone where the company stated the problems started.