AWS Outage Disrupts Major Online Services Worldwide

On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant outage in its US-EAST-1 region, located in Northern Virginia. The disruption began around 7:11 AM UTC and lasted approximately three hours, with full service restoration reported by 10:30 AM UTC.

The root cause was identified as a Domain Name System (DNS) resolution failure affecting the DynamoDB API endpoints. This issue cascaded, impacting multiple AWS services, including EC2, Lambda, and SQS. The failure originated in AWS's US-EAST-1 region, where a DNS malfunction in DynamoDB—a core AWS database—caused services to lose access to essential data by failing to resolve server addresses.

The outage had a widespread impact, disrupting various online services globally. Affected platforms included Amazon.com, Prime Video, Snapchat, Reddit, Venmo, Lyft, Fortnite, and Duolingo. Gamers experienced login and server issues, with titles like Battlefield 6 and Fortnite becoming unplayable for extended periods.

This incident underscores the internet's reliance on major cloud providers and raises concerns about digital infrastructure resilience. AWS has experienced previous outages, notably in June 2023 and December 2021, also centered on its US-EAST-1 region.

Despite the disruptions, Amazon's stock rose 1.6% following the incident, underlining AWS's integral role in the digital economy.

The outage highlights the critical vulnerability tied to relying heavily on a few cloud providers—namely AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The incident affected a wide range of services, from social networks and e-commerce to banking and government services, and even Amazon’s own operations, including Alexa and Ring products.

Experts emphasize the need for businesses to diversify their cloud strategies to prevent single points of failure. The AWS outage serves as a wake-up call for the industry to invest in more resilient and decentralized digital infrastructures.

AWS's US-EAST-1 region in Northern Virginia is one of the most prominently used AWS locations and often serves as the default region for many AWS services. DynamoDB is a core AWS database service that many online platforms rely on for storing user information and other critical data.

This incident serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities inherent in centralized cloud services and the importance of building resilient digital infrastructures.