Users of numerous online services and applications, including games like Fortnite, the virtual assistant Alexa and social networks like Snapchat, experienced a massive drop on Monday. in their services. The main cause was a significant disruption to Amazon Web Services (AWS)the cloud infrastructure giant that underpins much of the internet today.
This failure began in the morning hours and generated connection and operation problems on multiple digital platforms globally. The fall affected not only video games and communication apps, but also banking services and other essential applications, evidencing the critical dependency that many companies have on the AWS cloud to operate normally. As Amazon technical teams work to restore service, millions of users continue to face outages.
AWS, which provides compute, storage, and database capabilities to businesses and applications, suffered a critical issue in its largest region, the US-EAST-1 in Eastern Virginiawhere a significant increase in error rates and latency that affected multiple clients and digital services, causing the temporary closure or malfunction of well-known products and platforms.
Among those affected are Fortnite, the popular online video game from Epic Games; Alexa, Amazon’s smart assistant; and Snapchatthe social network of ephemeral messages. Other services impacted include Roblox, Canva, Duolingo, Zoom, as well as financial and banking applications such as BBVA, Santander, and payment platforms such as VISA. Even cryptocurrency platforms such as Coinbase or mobility and communication apps suffered interruptions.
What is known so far about the incident at AWS?
AWS released a statement acknowledging that there are “significant increases in error and latency rates” in several of its services within the US-EAST-1 region, and reported that its technical teams are working “on multiple fronts to accelerate recovery.” However, so far, neither an exact reason for the failure nor an estimated time for the complete fix has been disclosed.
Users on Reddit reported that Alexa stopped answering basic questions or executing commandsand elementary functions such as scheduled alarms stopped working. Fortnite and other platforms had to suspend online services, affecting millions of players. Snapchat and other social apps experienced massive disconnections or technical issues.
The vast majority of the problems were focused on the United States, although impacts were also reported in Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world, showing the level of global dependence on AWS infrastructure to operate essential digital services on a daily basis.
In addition to entertainment and communication platforms, financial, retail, and educational sectors also faced serious problems. For example, banking and payment processing apps showed interruptions that caused users to worry about ongoing operations, although some entities assured that the funds are safe.
While AWS continues to work to fully restore its servicesusers around the world experience interruptions that affect both entertainment and daily productivity. This situation is developing and the technology sector is closely watching the decisions that Amazon will make to prevent a fall of these dimensions from occurring again.
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