Several major websites and apps, including Lloyds Bank and Snapchat, were taken offline on Monday morning following an outage linked to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Users also reported being unable to access services such as the Ring doorbell app, Fortnite, and Amazon’s own Prime Video.
The disruption extended to the Government Gateway login system, affecting HMRC and other public services. Attempts to log in displayed an error message stating: “Sorry, there is a problem with the service. Try again later.”
Lloyds Bank’s website showed a similar notice: “Sorry, we’re unable to process your request at the moment. We are currently having some technical issues,” advising customers to contact its helpline. Users also experienced problems with the Halifax banking app.
The outage was traced to Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, which supports thousands of websites and online platforms.
AWS confirmed late Monday morning that it was working to resolve the issue, reporting that some services were beginning to recover.
“We have applied initial mitigations and are observing early signs of recovery for some impacted AWS services. During this time, requests may continue to fail as we work toward full resolution,” the company said.
The issue was linked to DynamoDB, AWS’s database system used by many websites to access stored data. AWS said engineers were “actively working on mitigating the issue,” which had affected 48 different AWS features.
Amazon’s own services, including Alexa and Prime Video, were also impacted.
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