Snapchat, Roblox and Banks Disrupted as Major AWS Outage Ripples Across the Internet

A widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted dozens of major apps, websites and financial services around the world, knocking popular platforms such as Snapchat and Roblox offline and causing login and payment problems for several banks.

The incident, centred on AWS’s US-East-1 region in Virginia, began in the morning hours and triggered spikes in error rates and latency across multiple cloud services that many consumer apps and enterprise systems rely on.

Users reported failures across social, gaming, communication and productivity apps, while several UK banking brands and government services experienced interruptions.

Among the affected were consumer platforms such as Snapchat and Roblox; communications tools including Signal and Slack; and services ranging from Amazon’s own Alexa and Prime Video to airline, telecom and retail systems. UK institutions, including Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, along with HMRC online services, also saw degraded performance and access issues.

AWS attributed the disruption to a technical problem within its cloud infrastructure rather than a cyberattack, with downstream impact across dependent services. Engineers identified issues linked to core database systems and said mitigations were applied throughout the morning.

By late morning in the UK, AWS reported “significant signs of recovery,” and most affected services were stabilising, though some platforms continued to experience residual problems as systems cleared backlogs and reconnected.

The outage underscored the internet’s reliance on a small number of hyperscale cloud providers. Industry analysts noted that a fault in a heavily used region can cascade across geographies and sectors—impacting everything from social apps and gaming networks to payments, government portals and smart-home devices.

Observers urged greater resilience planning and diversification to limit single points of failure in essential digital infrastructure.

Sources: Reuters, The Guardian,  Business Insider,  Sky News