What caused the AWS widespread outage?

A widespread Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on October 20, 2025, disrupted several major apps and websites, including Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and Perplexity.

The issue originated in AWS’s US-East-1 region in Northern Virginia, one of the company’s most heavily used data zones.

According to multiple reports, the outage was linked to technical problems with AWS’s DynamoDB database service, which handles massive volumes of data storage and retrieval requests.

As the malfunction spread, it affected interconnected systems such as Elastic Compute Cloud and Global Accelerator, causing cascading slowdowns across the internet.

While Amazon confirmed it had identified a “potential root cause,” the company did not share full technical details. The disruption began early in the day and continued for several hours before services gradually recovered.

Experts noted that even minor performance issues in core infrastructure like DynamoDB can ripple widely, exposing the risks of heavy dependence on centralized cloud networks.

Although AWS said there was no indication of a cyberattack, analysts argue the event highlights the fragility of global internet systems that rely so extensively on a handful of cloud providers.