Significant Web Disruption Impacts Numerous Sites and Mobile Apps

A widespread online outage has impacted numerous sites and apps worldwide, as users experiencing troubles connecting to the web due to difficulties at the online infrastructure system.

The disrupted apps comprise the social media app Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo, in addition to a host of Amazon-operated services such as its main retail site and the Ring doorbell home security firm.

Across the United Kingdom, the financial institution Lloyds was affected along with its affiliates Halifax and the Scottish bank, with also reports of problems reaching the the tax authority site on that morning. Additionally in Britain, several Ring users took to social media to report their security devices were malfunctioning.

In the UK alone, accounts of issues on individual apps ran into the thousands for each platform.

Amazon reported that the problem began in the Atlantic coast of the US at AWS, a division that offers crucial web backbone for a host of companies, who utilize space on AWS infrastructure. Amazon Web Services is the biggest global cloud computing system.

Shortly after late night (PDT) in the United States (8 in the morning BST), the company announced “increased failure rates and latencies” for AWS services in a area on the Atlantic seaboard of the America. The cascading impact was seen to hit services globally, and the outage tracking website indicating issues with the same sites in various regions.

The outage tracker Thousand Eyes, a tool that reports on web disruptions, further indicated a increase in problems on that morning, including several cases found in the Virginia area, the location of the eastern US data center where officials confirmed the problems originated.