Related to DNS Issues
Economic Damage Could Reach Hundreds of Billions of Dollars
The large-scale computer system outage that occurred at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud service, has mostly been resolved, but some errors are reportedly still ongoing.
On October 20 (local time), Amazon announced via an online notice that "recovery is in progress for all AWS services," and that service access is being successfully restored in most parts of the U.S. East region. However, the company added that "intermittent errors may occur" in some services that provide leased servers during the process of resolving network connectivity issues.
The outage was first reported just after midnight Pacific Time in the AWS service region located in Northern Virginia. About two hours later, the company explained in an online notice that a Domain Name System (DNS) issue had occurred with DynamoDB, one of its major database services. DNS is a system that converts website names into IP addresses, allowing browsers and other applications to access them.
With the AWS network accounting for about one-third of the global cloud service market, the outage disrupted services operated by several major corporations and affected countless users. According to Downdetector, a U.S.-based online outage tracking website, users reported being unable to access sites such as Disney+, Lyft, the McDonald's app, The New York Times, Reddit, Ring Doorbell, Robinhood, Snapchat, United Airlines, T-Mobile, PayPal, and Venmo. Major websites of UK government agencies were also reportedly affected.
Several subsidiary sites, including Amazon's e-commerce delivery system, were also down for a period of time. Social media users expressed frustration over outages affecting cloud-based games such as Roblox and Fortnite. The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also experienced service interruptions, causing inconvenience for many users.
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet performance monitoring company Catchpoint, told CNN that the economic damage caused by this AWS service outage could reach billions of dollars. CEO Daoudi said, "This incident not only highlights the complexity and vulnerability of the internet, but also shows how every aspect of our work relies on it." He added, "Considering the productivity losses from millions of workers being unable to perform their work, and the disruptions or delays to businesses from flights to factories, the economic impact could reach hundreds of billions of dollars."
Mike Chapple, a former National Security Agency (NSA) computer scientist, told CNBC, "Initial reports suggest that the issue was not with the database itself, and the data appears to be safe." He explained, "It seems there were problems with the records that tell other systems where to find their data." He added, "This incident once again reminds us how much the world relies on a handful of major cloud service providers. When one of these cloud providers sneezes, the entire internet catches a cold."
In July of last year, a problem during a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike caused Microsoft Windows systems to become paralyzed, resulting in global disruption.
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