AWS Recovering After Major Outage Hits Companies, Services Worldwide

(RTTNews) - Amazon Web Services, following a major outage in its cloud computing service across the world, especiallly the United States, started recovering early Monday.

AWS, tech major Amazon's cloud hosting provider, had went offline due to a problem with one of its core database products, affecting millions as it hit the websites and apps of major companies and critical services, including financial services, worldwide.

AWS, which first reported a problem at 3:11 a.m. ET, said the firm was dealing with an operational issue affecting 14 different services in its northern Virginia's center. According to the company, the problem stemmed from an error with Amazon's DynamoDB database service, a system for managing database tables and indexes.

Companies around the world that use cloud-based servers to host their data, including financial services, were impacted by the unplanned outage.

However, Amazon in an update at 5:27 a.m. said that most websites and apps relying on its services were working normally again. AWS at 6:35 a.m ET said the database problem that caused the outage was fully mitigated. Meanwhile, the firm warned that there may still be delays.

Amazon.com and Prime Video, airlines Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, some major banks, social networks including Snapchat and Reddit, messaging services such as Signal, Cloud-based games such as Roblox and Fortnite, the digital Ring doorbell service, among many others, were severely impacted by the issue. Coinbase, U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, said its services were unavailable due to the AWS outage.

Meanwhile, Article 19, a nongovernmental organization that promotes freedom of expression, reportedly warned of the democratic consequences of such outages. According to Corinne Cath-Speth, Article 19's head of digital, such disruptions are not just technical issues, they're democratic failures as critical services go offline when a single provider is hit by an outage.