Widespread internet outage hits sites using Amazon’s cloud services
The AWS outage has triggered widespread disruptions across major platforms including Amazon, Snapchat and games Fortnite and Roblox, affecting users worldwide.
Internet users across the globe suffered disruptions as a result of a widespread outage that hit dozens of major websites and apps using Amazon Web Services on Monday night.
Dozens of apps, including Amazon, Zoom, Snapchat and Canva, were impacted by the internet blackout.
In an update Monday night, AWS said the underlying issue behind the global tech outage had “been fully mitigated”, adding that most AWS Service operations were “succeeding normally now”.
“Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution,” the company said, as some of its services continued to work through a backlog of events.
The outage was caused by issues with AWS in the US, and impacted apps that depend on its infrastructure, according to service disruption platform Downdetector.
Telstra have advised their services had not been impacted by the outage.
Optus said its fixed and mobiles services were not affected, but data services that relied on AWS infrastructure were interrupted during the outage.
Apps including those of global banks crashed. Gaming platforms Wordle, Duolingo, Roblox and Fortnite were also affected, as were Microsoft 365 and eventbrite.
Earlier a spokesman for Canva, the graphic design tool, said: “Our cloud provider is currently experiencing problems. It’s not the experience we want for you and we’re working closely with them to help re-establish service. Thanks for your patience and understanding as we work to bring things back to normal.”
Messaging app Signal was also down. Its president Meredith Whittaker wrote: “We are aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.”
Cryptocurrency company Coinbase also experienced issues as a result of the blackout.
It told customers: “We’re aware many users are currently unable to access Coinbase due to an AWS outage. Our team is working on the issue and we’ll provide updates here. All funds are safe.”
AWS is down. Perplexity, Snapchat, Fortnite, Airtable, Canva, Amazon, Slack, ... Half of the internet is affected pic.twitter.com/KGIeXdLS7r
— Pierre-Baptiste Borges (@pierbapt) October 20, 2025
In an earlier update on its website, AWS said: “We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region.
“Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1.
“We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues.
“During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share.”
AWS is the world’s biggest provider of cloud computing services.
This involves companies effectively renting out space on Amazon servers in a giant remote data centre, rather than buying and operating their own IT systems.
The Wall Street Journal was among several media organisations affected by the outage.
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