Amazon Web Services crash disrupts Snapchat, Prime Video, Canva and major banks

A massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday caused widespread disruption across the digital world, impacting millions of users and crippling operations for major online platforms, financial institutions, and media outlets.

The breakdown, which began early in the day, took down some of the internet’s most heavily used services, including Amazon’s own e-commerce platform, Snapchat, Prime Video, Canva, and several other apps reliant on AWS’s cloud infrastructure.

Major organisations weren’t spared. Capital One and Delta Airlines reported intermittent downtime, while delivery platforms such as DoorDash and various global news sites experienced significant delays.

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Ironically, unaffected platforms like X (formerly Twitter) became hubs for frustrated users to vent and share screenshots of failed connections and frozen dashboards.

The scale of the disruption was extensive. Snapchat users were unable to refresh feeds or send snaps, Prime Video subscribers faced endless buffering, and Canva’s creative suite froze for countless designers in the middle of projects.

Smaller digital businesses and indie game developers also went offline, exposing just how dependent the internet has become on AWS’s backbone.

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“It’s as if the internet’s spine gave out,” remarked one cybersecurity analyst, emphasising how AWS’s dominance in cloud computing magnifies the effects of such outages.

Analysts estimated that by midday, the downtime had cost affected companies millions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue.

Amazon later confirmed that the disruption stemmed from issues with DynamoDB, its flagship NoSQL database service, which powers data management for thousands of web and mobile apps.

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The root cause, according to AWS engineers, was a Domain Name System (DNS) failure, a malfunction in the internet’s “address book” that translates website names into machine-readable IP addresses.

When this DNS layer malfunctioned, it triggered a cascade of failures: platforms couldn’t locate or access essential data, effectively freezing operations across the AWS ecosystem.

The company said it has since restored most services and is working to ensure system stability while investigating the full extent of the failure.