Amazon DNS outage breaks much of the internet

A significant outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has led to extensive disruptions across the internet, impacting numerous websites, banking services, and various government platforms. Early on Monday morning, Amazon reported that the situation had been fully addressed, with most services gradually returning to their normal operations after several hours of widespread accessibility issues. The outage, which began around 3 a.m. EST, was attributed to problems with the Domain Name System (DNS). This critical system is responsible for translating web addresses into IP addresses, enabling customer applications and websites to load properly. While some DNS-related issues can be resolved quickly, others may take longer to fix, leading to extended downtime. A number of prominent applications experienced significant outages during this incident, including Coinbase, Fortnite, Signal, and Zoom. Even Amazon's own services, like Ring video surveillance, were affected. AWS is a vital component for millions of businesses and organizations that depend on it for hosting their websites, applications, and essential online systems. With data centers distributed globally, Amazon commands over 30% of the cloud market. Amazon has yet to provide a detailed explanation for the cause of this disruption. The last notable global internet outage occurred in 2024, stemming from a flawed update to cybersecurity software by Crowdstrike, which led to widespread computer failures and disruptions in air travel. Prior to that, a DNS malfunction at Akamai in 2021 resulted in several hours of downtime for major websites, including FedEx and the PlayStation Network.