A significant Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20, 2025, disrupted numerous online platforms worldwide, highlighting the internet's reliance on centralized cloud infrastructure.

The disruption began at approximately 3:11 AM ET in AWS's US-EAST-1 region, affecting services that depend on AWS's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3). Major platforms impacted included:

• Social Media & Communication: Snapchat, Signal, WhatsApp, and Zoom experienced connectivity issues.

• Gaming: Fortnite, Roblox, Clash Royale, and Clash of Clans were temporarily offline.

• Financial Services: Venmo, Robinhood, Chime, and Coinbase reported disruptions.

• Streaming & Entertainment: Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Apple Music were affected.

• Productivity Tools: Slack, Trello, and Microsoft Teams experienced outages.

• Retail & Food Services: The McDonald's app and Starbucks reported issues. Reuters+1

In the UK, institutions such as Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Vodafone, BT, and the HM Revenue & Customs website were disrupted. Reuters

AWS identified the issue as stemming from an internal problem within the EC2 network, specifically a subsystem responsible for monitoring network load balancers. By 12:13 PM ET, Amazon implemented a fix, restoring connectivity and API functions. However, throttling of new EC2 instance launches continued to be addressed. The Verge

Despite the resolution, some services experienced intermittent issues throughout the day. Amazon has not provided a detailed public breakdown of the outage's full impact.

This incident underscores the vulnerabilities inherent in the internet's infrastructure, where a single provider's failure can have cascading effects across various sectors. The outage serves as a reminder of the need for diversified cloud strategies and robust contingency planning to mitigate such widespread disruptions.

Amazon has yet to comment publicly on the incident.