Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage on Tuesday, affecting millions of users worldwide and disrupting popular platforms including Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo, and Amazon's own retail site. The UK's National Rail website also suffered performance issues.
AWS confirmed the issue originated in its DynamoDB database service within the US-EAST-1 Region, leading to widespread connectivity problems. As of 1:03pm PT, the company reported continued recovery across all services, with Lambda invocation errors fully resolved. However, intermittent function errors may persist for some customers.
The outage sparked criticism from UK politicians, with the Treasury Committee writing to Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby to question why AWS has not been designated a 'critical third party' to the financial sector. Cori Crider of the Future of Technology Institute warned the UK is 'dangerously overexposed to foreign Big Tech monopolies.'
Despite the disruption, Amazon promoted its upcoming 23 October AWS event, sending reminder emails to customers. The company encouraged clients to 'modernize' their cloud experience with AI features. Meanwhile, some Post Office branches in London refused Amazon returns due to barcode processing failures caused by the outage.
