Key Takeaways
- Major Disruptions Across the Web: An early-morning Amazon Web Services outage disrupted major apps and platforms including Fortnite, Snapchat, Canva, and Coinbase.
- Root Cause and Recovery: AWS cited a DNS issue in its US-EAST-1 region but said by 6:35 a.m. ET that the problem was “fully mitigated,” though some throttling continued during recovery.
- Concerns Over Cloud Concentration: The outage reignited debate about the tech industry’s reliance on a handful of cloud providers — and the risks that come when one of them stumbles.
Several major websites and apps — including Fortnite, Snapchat, Canva, and Coinbase — experienced widespread disruptions early Monday as Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a major outage.
Amazon confirmed the issue around 3 a.m. ET, citing “increased error rates and latencies” across multiple services in its US-EAST-1 region, one of its most heavily used data hubs. By 6:35 a.m., the company said the “underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated,” though it warned that “some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution.”
The outage briefly crippled parts of the internet, affecting gaming, social media, design tools, and even financial trading platforms. AI startup Perplexity, crypto exchange Coinbase, and trading app Robinhood all confirmed AWS-related disruptions, while Canva posted on X that its cloud provider was “currently experiencing problems.”
“It’s not the experience we want for you,” Canva wrote. “We’re working closely with them to help re-establish service.”
The incident marks the most significant internet disruption since the 2024 CrowdStrike malfunction that brought down systems at banks, hospitals, and airports around the world.
AWS, which powers everything from e-commerce and streaming to artificial intelligence, remains the backbone of the modern web — a reminder that when it sneezes, much of the digital economy catches a cold.
By mid-morning, most services were recovering, but the outage renewed questions about the concentration of cloud infrastructure among a few tech giants. As one cybersecurity analyst told Fox Business, “When half the internet runs on one company’s servers, even a hiccup can shake the global economy.”