Table of Contents
- Massive AWS Outage Disrupts Major Websites
- Who Was Affected?
- What Caused the AWS Failure?
- Why This Outage Matters Beyond Inconvenience
- Sources
AWS Outage Sends Digital World Into Chaos
On Monday, October 20, 2025, a major disruption to AWS (Amazon Web Services) sent shockwaves across the internet, knocking popular platforms like Amazon, Coinbase, Roblox, Hulu, Venmo, and even the Signal messaging app offline for hours. For many users, it felt like the internet itself had gone dark.
Amazon confirmed that its cloud infrastructure—specifically the US-EAST-1 region, one of its largest and most critical data hubs—was experiencing widespread issues affecting at least 28 core services. The company said engineers were “working urgently” to restore normal operations, but offered no immediate timeline.
Who Was Affected by the AWS Outage?
The ripple effects were immediate and far-reaching. Companies that rely on AWS for hosting, databases, or authentication found themselves powerless to fix the problem from their end. Among the hardest hit:
- Amazon – The retail giant saw checkout failures and app instability.
- Coinbase – The crypto exchange warned users they couldn’t access accounts but assured them “all funds are safe.”
- Roblox – Millions of young gamers were logged out mid-play.
- Hulu & McDonald’s – Streaming and mobile ordering services went down.
- Signal – The encrypted messaging app suffered partial outages, raising concerns about communication resilience.
According to DownDetector, a real-time outage tracking site, error reports spiked to over 150,000 in under an hour—making it one of the largest single-cloud outages of 2025.
What Caused the AWS Failure?
While Amazon has not yet disclosed the root cause, early speculation points to a cascading failure in networking infrastructure within the US-EAST-1 region, which serves much of the eastern United States and hosts thousands of enterprise clients.
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search startup Perplexity, confirmed on X (formerly Twitter): “The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.” Similarly, Signal’s CEO Meredith Whittaker posted: “This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.”
Notably, no evidence of a cyberattack has been reported. The incident appears to be a technical malfunction—highlighting the fragility of even the most robust cloud systems.
Why This AWS Outage Matters Beyond Inconvenience
This isn’t just about frustrated shoppers or gamers—it’s a stark reminder of how centralized the modern internet has become. AWS alone powers an estimated 33% of all cloud-hosted websites. When it stumbles, entire sectors of the digital economy freeze.
Critics argue this level of dependency creates systemic risk. “We’ve built a global digital infrastructure on a handful of cloud providers,” said Dr. Naomi Chen, a tech policy fellow at Stanford. “One bug, one misconfiguration, and the lights go out for millions.”
As companies rush to adopt AI and real-time services, the pressure on cloud infrastructure will only grow. Monday’s outage may be a wake-up call for businesses to diversify hosting strategies—or face recurring chaos.
