In the early hours of Monday, October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS)—the world’s largest cloud computing provider—suffered a massive outage that knocked much of the internet offline. An AWS status update later described the event as a “major outage” that disrupted a large portion of the internet, affecting everything from banking apps and airlines to smart home devices and gaming platforms. Websites of major institutions, including banks and airlines, briefly went dark as users around the world reported widespread failures in familiar apps like Snapchat and Alexa. In the U.K., customers of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland, and Halifax reported login errors, while even government services such as HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the official Gov.uk portal were hit. The disruption lasted for nearly 15 hours in total, with AWS announcing by Monday evening that “all AWS services had returned to normal operations.”
Amazon quickly traced the problem to a technical glitch in its DynamoDB database service located in the US East (Northern Virginia) region. Around 4:26 a.m. ET, AWS engineers began observing unusually high error rates when clients tried to connect to DynamoDB. In its status update, the company confirmed that the issue was caused by a DNS (Domain Name System) error preventing the system from locating the correct servers for DynamoDB. Essentially, an automated update had mistakenly left the regional endpoint—dynamodb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com—with an empty DNS record, making new requests impossible to resolve. By approximately 5:25 a.m. ET, AWS engineers restored the correct DNS entries, and DynamoDB began accepting connections again. Even after the DNS issue was resolved, AWS had to throttle operations to clear a backlog of queued requests, extending the recovery process. Throughout Monday, AWS provided regular updates on its service dashboard, and by 6:01 p.m. ET, the company confirmed that all affected systems were back to normal.
The outage had far-reaching consequences, rippling across thousands of apps, platforms, and online services that rely on AWS infrastructure. Communication and social media platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Signal, WhatsApp, Zoom, and Slack all experienced widespread errors. The gaming and entertainment sector was equally affected, with popular platforms such as Roblox, Fortnite, Xbox Live, and streaming services like Hulu and Apple TV experiencing downtime. Financial and commercial services also took a hit—payment apps like Venmo, crypto exchange Coinbase, and U.K. banks including Lloyds and Halifax went offline temporarily, while airline check-in systems for Delta and United faced disruptions. Even Amazon’s own ecosystem was affected, with its main shopping site Amazon.com, Prime Video, Ring doorbell services, and Alexa voice assistant going offline. The AWS support case-ticketing system was also rendered inaccessible, preventing customers from submitting help requests.
Internet monitoring services reported that over 1,000 businesses and apps were affected by the incident. Downdetector’s global outage map lit up with red zones as millions of users reported connection issues. The effects were even seen in smart homes—owners of Eight Sleep smart mattresses, for instance, found their beds stuck in unusual positions due to the cloud disconnection. Eight Sleep’s CEO later apologized and promised to introduce an “offline mode” allowing users to control the beds via Bluetooth during future outages.
AWS, which controls roughly 30% of the global cloud market, operates massive data centers worldwide, making any service failure highly consequential. Analysts noted that while this outage highlights the fragility of interconnected systems, most AWS customers are unlikely to migrate to other providers given the platform’s dominance and reliability record. However, the incident served as a powerful reminder that even a small DNS fault in a key data center can cascade into a global disruption.
Amazon’s engineers worked tirelessly throughout the day to restore service stability. By late Monday, most core systems had been recovered, and by early Tuesday morning, AWS reported “significant signs of recovery” with most requests successfully processed. Although some users continued to experience occasional timeouts as queued operations cleared, the crisis had largely subsided. AWS directed customers to its Service Health Dashboard for real-time updates and announced plans to release a detailed post-incident report explaining the exact cause and sequence of failures.
This incident joins a list of major technology breakdowns that have shaken the global internet in recent years. In July 2024, a faulty update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused a worldwide Windows PC failure that grounded flights and crashed banking systems for days. Similarly, in 2021, a software glitch at DNS giant Akamai took major sites like the PlayStation Network, Steam, FedEx, and Airbnb offline. Each of these events, including the AWS outage, highlights how complex global infrastructures depend on fragile single points of failure. While companies are increasingly investing in redundancy and backup systems, the scale of cloud dependence—especially given that nearly 96 million websites and about 30% of cloud workloads run on AWS—makes such resilience an ongoing challenge.
Sources: Amazon’s official outage summary and service status updates; news reports from Time, Al Jazeera, TechRadar, and other outlets.