Washington DC: Amazon announced on Monday that its systems were largely back online following a widespread outage caused by technical problems within its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to a report by CNN.

While the company said the issue had been "fully mitigated", users continued to experience residual delays across a range of services.

The disruption, which began overnight, affected numerous high-profile websites, mobile applications, and critical digital infrastructure around the world. Services impacted included social media platforms such as Snapchat and Facebook, gaming giants like Fortnite and Roblox, streaming services including Disney+ and Hulu, as well as major commercial operations such as McDonald's, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines.

Financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms, including Coinbase, also reported service interruptions, while smart home devices within Amazon’s ecosystem and AI firm Perplexity were similarly affected.

According to AWS, the issue was traced back to a fault in the Domain Name System (DNS), a core component of internet infrastructure responsible for translating web addresses into numerical IP addresses. Though data remained secure, users were effectively locked out, as applications were unable to connect to back-end systems.

AWS first confirmed the problem at 1:26 am Eastern Time (10:56 am IST), reporting "significant error rates for requests". By 6:35 am ET (4:05 pm IST), the company confirmed that the DNS fault had been resolved. Amazon recommended affected clients clear their caches — temporary data storage used to improve performance — to fully restore functionality.

Despite resolving the primary issue, AWS noted that it continued to monitor some lingering disruptions, including problems with EC2, its virtual server platform that underpins many business-critical applications.

Throughout the outage, companies took to social media to reassure users. Coinbase emphasised that all customer funds remained safe, while Perplexity AI acknowledged the disruption, attributing it to AWS infrastructure failures.

AWS posted regular updates on its official service health dashboard, stating it had identified the root cause and was pursuing "multiple parallel paths" to accelerate recovery.

While Amazon has not yet released a full technical explanation, it is expected to provide a detailed post-incident report in the coming days.

Technology analyst Lance Ulanoff told CNN the incident underscored AWS’s vast influence over global digital infrastructure, highlighting how deeply modern life relies on uninterrupted internet services. "When a provider like AWS goes down, the ripple effects are instant and far-reaching," he said.

Industry experts estimate the economic impact of the outage could run into the hundreds of billions globally, given the scale and scope of the affected services.

Originally developed to support Amazon’s own online operations, AWS has grown into one of the world’s largest cloud computing platforms, providing essential services to governments, financial institutions, media organisations, startups, and global corporations.

ANI