A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday disrupted vast portions of the internet, affecting websites, banks, apps, and even some government services worldwide.
Amazon confirmed the issue had been “fully mitigated” after several hours of downtime, with most systems now returning to normal. The company attributed the disruption, which began around 3 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, to a problem with DNS (Domain Name System), the system responsible for converting web addresses into IP addresses that websites need to load.
The outage caused widespread service failures across popular platforms, including Coinbase, Fortnite, Signal, and Zoom, along with Amazon’s own services such as Ring.
Because millions of businesses rely on AWS to power their online operations, the downtime had a ripple effect across the global web. AWS currently holds about 30% of the world’s cloud computing market, making any outage particularly far-reaching.
Amazon did not provide details on what triggered the DNS failure but confirmed that engineers worked to restore connectivity throughout the morning.
The incident follows a history of major internet outages linked to key infrastructure providers. In 2024, a faulty update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused global system crashes and flight delays, while a DNS malfunction at Akamai in 2021 temporarily took down several large websites, including FedEx, Steam, and the PlayStation Network.
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Monday’s AWS issue once again highlights the internet’s heavy dependence on a few large cloud providers to keep the world online.
