On Monday, millions of users experienced significant difficulties accessing their favorite websites and online services. Thousands of platforms, including Reddit, Fortnite, the PlayStation Network, and even Amazon’s own services, were rendered unavailable for hours due to a widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS). This incident highlighted the centralized and fragile nature of modern internet infrastructure.

Amazon server downfall paralyzes the internet

The outage began just after midnight Pacific time and was at its peak as the day dawned on the East Coast of the United States. While it took Amazon about three and a half hours to fully resolve the issue, the aftereffects continued throughout the day. The number of businesses affected by the outage exceeded 2,000, including critical services such as social media platforms, gaming services, and even online banking. Downdetector, the outage tracking site, reported that more than 9.8 million reports of the problem were recorded worldwide.

Amazon initially revealed that the issue stemmed from a problem in the US-East-1 region of Virginia, one of the internet’s most important data center regions. Initially identified as a “DNS issue,” the root cause of the outage was reportedly an error in an internal subsystem that monitors the status of network load balancers. Simply put, this disruption, which occurred in the system that routes website addresses to servers, paralyzed a significant portion of the internet.

This incident has also alarmed cybersecurity experts. While there is no evidence that the outage was the result of a cyberattack, experts warned that such technical malfunctions can create an opportunity for cybercriminals. While systems are vulnerable and companies’ attention is focused on resolving technical issues, hackers may attempt to exploit vulnerabilities. Therefore, users are advised to be particularly vigilant against suspicious emails or phishing attacks claiming to be related to the outage and requesting password changes.

This major outage has once again demonstrated the extent to which our daily lives depend on digital infrastructures. So, were you affected by this outage? Were there any services or sites you had trouble accessing on Monday? Share your experiences in the comments.