On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a significant outage in its US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region that disrupted hundreds of internet services globally. This outage exposed the extensive reliance on cloud infrastructure by many popular websites and applications.
Root Cause of the Outage
The outage was triggered by DNS resolution failures for the DynamoDB service endpoints, a critical AWS database service. This failure prevented other AWS services from locating and connecting to DynamoDB’s API servers, which caused a cascade of service disruptions across the AWS infrastructure.
Timeline and Impact
- The disruption began on October 19 at 11:49 PM PDT and lasted until October 20 at 3:01 PM PDT.
- The DNS issue was identified at 12:26 AM PDT on October 20 and partially resolved by 2:24 AM PDT.
- EC2 instance launch systems and Network Load Balancer health checks experienced secondary impairments, extending the recovery period.
- AWS throttled some operations, including EC2 instance launches and asynchronous Lambda invocations, to stabilize services.
- Full service restoration was achieved by 3:01 PM PDT, although some backlogs in services such as AWS Config and Redshift took additional hours to clear.
Services Affected and Global Reach
The outage impacted over 100 AWS services and disrupted popular platforms including Snapchat, Reddit, Fortnite, and Venmo. Even global AWS features like IAM and DynamoDB Global Tables were intermittently affected, demonstrating the broad impact of the failure.
Lessons and Recovery
AWS engineers confirmed the outage was due to an internal DNS misconfiguration, not a cyberattack. The resolution involved restoring DNS functionality and gradually lifting throttling restrictions. This incident underscores the critical importance of multi-region architecture and resilient cloud design to mitigate downtime risks.
Businesses relying on AWS are advised to review their failover strategies and prepare for potential future disruptions by implementing robust recovery plans.
Stay updated with us for more detailed insights and post-event AWS summaries.
