Amazon Web Services issued an apology after a massive outage in its North Virginia data center crippled major platforms including Reddit, Snapchat, and Lloyds Bank.
Amazon has apologized to millions of users worldwide after a major outage in its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), caused widespread disruption to some of the internet’s biggest platforms.
The outage, which began in the early hours of Monday October 20, 2025, originated in AWS’s US-EAST-1 data center in North Virginia — one of the largest hubs powering global internet traffic. The disruption affected more than a thousand websites and online services, including Snapchat, Reddit, Venmo, and UK-based Lloyds Bank.
In a statement on Tuesday, Amazon said the incident was caused by internal errors that prevented its systems from properly linking domain names with their corresponding IP addresses — the numerical labels computers use to locate websites.
“We apologies for the impact this event caused our customers,” the company said. “We know how critical our services are to their businesses and end users, and we are taking steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
While many platforms were restored within hours, some services, such as Lloyds Bank’s online system, experienced interruptions well into the afternoon. Other users reported unexpected secondary issues, including malfunctioning “smart” devices that rely on AWS connections.
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Eight Sleep, a smart bed manufacturer, said some of its connected mattresses overheated or became stuck in a raised position during the outage. The company has since pledged to “outage-proof” its products to avoid future incidents.
According to Amazon’s post-incident report, the problem stemmed from what engineers described as a “latent race condition” — a dormant software bug that surfaced under specific and unlikely circumstances. The failure occurred in an automated process managing the Domain Name System (DNS) databases that translate website addresses into machine-readable codes.
Dr. Junade Ali, a fellow at the UK’s Institute of Engineering and Technology, said the disruption highlighted the risks of excessive dependence on a single cloud provider.
“This was essentially caused by faulty automation that broke internal address systems,” Ali said. “Companies relying solely on one AWS region were particularly vulnerable.”
Analysts say the event underscores the fragility of global digital infrastructure dominated by a few U.S. tech giants, including Amazon and Microsoft.
Amazon said it is reviewing its internal automation systems and will “do everything we can” to strengthen service reliability and prevent future widespread outages.
