AWS Outage: Is There A Chinese Cyberattack Behind The Internet Disruption As Snapchat, Robinhood, Amazon & Others Go Dark?

AWS Outage, Snapchat Down: A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday caused significant disruptions across multiple major websites and applications worldwide, including Snapchat, Robinhood, Coinbase, and Perplexity AI. The cloud computing giant confirmed that its US-EAST-1 region, one of its largest data centers, was experiencing increased “error rates and latencies”, affecting services that rely heavily on AWS infrastructure.

The outage sent ripple effects through social media, finance apps, e-commerce platforms, and entertainment services.

AWS Outage,: Which Services Are Affected According To Downdetector?

Reports from Downdetector, which monitors online service disruptions, showed spikes in outages for Amazon.com, Prime Video, Alexa, and Venmo. While some platforms have begun to recover, intermittent problems persisted into Monday evening.

Affected platforms included:

Snapchat and Robinhood, both confirming service disruptions.

Perplexity AI and Coinbase, which confirmed outages tied to AWS.

Amazon’s own services, including Amazon.com, Prime Video, and Alexa, which faced connectivity issues.

PayPal’s Venmo also experienced downtime as part of the widespread disruption.

AWS Response

Amazon Web Services issued a statement confirming the disruptions, “We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause.”

According to Reuters, AWS reported that its systems were showing “massive signs of recovery”, signaling gradual restoration of services.

Also Read: Is Amazon Prime Video Down? Internet Calls It ‘Major Outage’ As Services Get Affected On Diwali

Elon Musk Responds To AWS Outage

Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, noted that his platform remained operational despite the AWS outage, “X works,” he said, without further comment.

Both The Verge and The Guardian confirmed that the disruption originated within AWS infrastructure and was not caused by external interference. Nonetheless, the outage briefly reignited concerns over potential foreign cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure.

At the peak of the outage, services hosted on AWS, Alexa, Robinhood, Snapchat, went partially offline, triggering social media panic and a 0.8% intraday dip in Amazon’s stock.

China Cyberattack Behind AWS Outage?

According to the cybersecurity experts there is currently no verified evidence linking the outage to any state-sponsored activity, including from China. Previous AWS failures, such as those in 2021 and 2023, were traced to network configuration issues and operational errors, rather than hacking.

Nevertheless, the geopolitical backdrop has heightened scrutiny. Recent US cybersecurity briefings noted an increase in Chinese reconnaissance targeting Western tech and financial systems, which amplifies concerns during even routine outages.

Also Read: AWS Outage Hits ‘Half The Internet’: Snapchat, Roblox, Amazon, Duolingo And Other Major Services Disrupted |What We Know So Far