Expert warns of huge security risk to people in UK after major outage today caused chaos
An unexpected and widespread Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage has thrown more than 1,000 companies into chaos today.
A third of the internet is said to rely on AWS, including the likes of Snapchat, Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite and Lloyds Banking Group, who were all hit.
Downdetector - a platform that monitors user complaints about online services - recorded a surge in reports on Monday morning (20 October), with over 2,681 incidents related to AWS and around 500 issues reported for the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website by 9am.
AWS has been able to identify the issue as 'DNS resolution', which is the process of translating a website’s name, like google.com, into its numerical IP address, so your computer can find and connect to the correct server online.
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After 10am, the cloud computing system said it had deployed a fix, but then Reddit went down and AWS said in an update that there is still a backlog to get through.
By 5pm, it appears more fixes are being applied, with some apps like Roblox and Fortnite up and running again. A few years ago, I would have been buzzing with that.
"We have taken additional mitigation steps to aid the recovery of the underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers and are now seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services," AWS said in its latest update.
"We have also identified and are applying next steps to mitigate throttling of new EC2 instance launches."
Amid all the mayhem, however, an expert has issued a warning to British businesses.
As reported by Tom's Guide, cybersecurity expert Christian Espinosa said: "The widespread outage that affected Amazon Web Services and major platforms across the UK is a stark reminder that our digital world is built on a surprisingly fragile foundation.
"Cloud concentration, where a handful of providers host most of our critical systems, creates a single point of failure.
"When one data region or provider goes down, ripple effects hit everything from retail and finance to logistics and communications. For UK businesses, this affects security more than productivity.
"During outages, normal safeguards are often bypassed: staff use personal devices, backup credentials circulate, and attackers exploit the confusion."
Katie Eade, an online tutor who teaches students with additional needs, told the BBC that this morning's outage caused 'big problems' for her students because her classes are done over Zoom.
"I cannot afford to be paying for multiple services just in case they don't work," the teacher, from Derby, said.
"Tech companies say they can keep up and make big promises of what they can do.
"But days like today do make me think how true that is."
LADbible has reached out to Amazon Web Services for comment.
Topics: UK News, Technology, Amazon, Snapchat
Anish Vij