A major internet outage has taken down hundreds of applications globally, with customers reporting disruption to services such as Snapchat, Slack, and Amazon.
The outage, which stats from Downdetector show began at around 7.30am UK time, is believed to be linked to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Initial reports show consumers reporting disruption to banking applications, with Lloyds and Halifax customers unable to access services.
This is a developing story, and ITPro will provide regular updates.
New update from AWS confirms full recovery underway
AWS has issued a fresh update on the outage this morning, confirming that the "underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated".
"Most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now. Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution," the company said in a service update.
"Some services are continuing to work through a backlog of events such as Cloudtrail and Lambda. While most operations are recovered, requests to launch new EC2 instances (or services that launch EC2 instances such as ECS) in the US-EAST-1 Region are still experiencing increased error rates."
AWS adds that if customers are still experiencing issues resolving DynamoDB service endpoints in US-EAST-1, they should flush DNS caches.
"We will provide an update by 4:15 AM, or sooner if we have additional information to share."
This is a big update here showing that recovery is continuing at pace. But it's not completely resolved, however. With "most" AWS services operating normally, there will still be some services out there experiencing issues.
A bit of light humor on BlueSky this morning in the wake of the AWS outage.
It appears Edinburgh Castle isn't rendering due to the disruption...
Edinburgh castle failing to render, likely thanks to the AWS outage
— @olil.bsky.social (@olil.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T10:47:37.410Z
Customers at Lloyds Bank are still having issues logging into online banking services. A screenshot of the bank's online login page obtained by ITPro shows customers are being logged out as a result of the disruption.
HMRC confirms service disruption
HMRC has confirmed it's experiencing problems in the wake of the AWS outage today. A spokesperson for the tax office told The Guardian:
"“We’re aware that customers are having problems accessing our online services, as part of global issues affecting Amazon Web Services. We’re working urgently with them on this matter.
“Our phonelines are currently busy as a result, so for anything that isn’t urgent we recommend calling at a later time.”
Separate reports from CNBC also show United Airlines is experiencing issues at present.
Customers at United and Delta airlines have reportedly had trouble checking in for flights while
Reports of airport disruption mount
ITPro has received some reports of airline disruption at a host of locations on both sides of the Atlantic. An anonymous source revealed some Delta Airlines flights at LaGuardia Airport in New York City have been grounded.
Whether this is an issue affecting Delta directly, or air traffic control services, is yet to be confirmed.
Departure boards at other airports, including JFK and Boston Logan show that no Delta Airlines flights have taken off as intended. Delta flights departing Heathrow also appear to be delayed.
There's no sign that this is the result of a cybersecurity incident, however. Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at security firm Sophos, says consumers and enterprises alike can rest easy on this occasion.
"When anything like this happens the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable. AWS has a far reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset," he says.
"In this case it looks like it is an IT issue on the database side and they will be working to remedy it as an absolute priority."
Watch out for scams while outage continues
Security experts are warning this is prime time for cyber criminals and scammers, with many likely capitalizing on the disruption to target consumers.
Charlotte Wilson, head of enterprise at Check Point Software, says consumers should remain vigilant and keep an eye out for potential "quick fix" solutions offers online.
"When companies rush to restore access, systems and staff are stretched thin, and that’s when attackers strike," she says.
"Expect a spike in fake ‘refund’ or ‘discount’ offers, phishing emails, and scam links claiming to fix the problem.
"It’s not just businesses at risk. Many of the affected platforms are games and apps used by children, a prime time for scammers to exploit trust. Because the internet may be global, but resilience starts local - with what each of us does next.”
AI browser startup Perplexity now ranks among those impacted by the AWS outage.
In a post on X, CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed the company is experiencing issues, adding it's "working on resolving" the disruption.
Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.October 20, 2025
IT downtime is a costly business
This incident could prove costly for some businesses, with research showing IT downtime has a huge impact on both enterprise productivity and finances.
As ITPro reported earlier this year, analysis from Liquid Web shows businesses experience an average of five hours of website downtime on a monthly basis. There's a confluence of issues at play here, including poor infrastructure and security gaps.
Previous research from Splunk shows IT downtime costs enterprises an eye-watering $400 billion each year.
Naturally, there are ways to counter this. However, when a major cloud provider experiences issues there's not a whole lot you can you. It's simply a waiting game at this point, and many enterprises will be rearing to go once they're back up and running.
Have you been impacted by the service outage at work or at home? Get in touch with ITPro, we'd love to hear from you.
A quick glance at Downdetector shows there's now a downward curve on user reports following a huge spike earlier this morning.
The decreases are varied though. Reports on disruption to Lloyds Bank, for example, are decreasing at quite some pace while others in a more steady fashion.
There could still be a lengthy wait for consumers and businesses worldwide.
How long until the AWS outage is fixed?
Given AWS is already seeing signs of improvement, it appears we're on the road to recovery here, but it could still be quite some time.
The company notes it has a significant backlog of queued requests, meaning users of many popular applications could be waiting a while.
UPDATE: AWS says it's seeing "significant signs of recovery" following "initial mitigations" implemented by the cloud giant.
"Most requests should now be succeeding," the company said in a status update. "We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information."
Regardless of any improvements so far, AWS still classes the severity of the issue as high.
In terms of enterprise applications, the aforementioned issues with Slack will likely have a huge impact on workforce productivity until a fix is issues by AWS.
Other Software as a Service (SaaS) applications such as Asana are down while some Microsoft 365 users have reported issues. Jira and Microsoft Teams also show a spike in outage reports coinciding with the incident.
My Ring doorbell is also out of action, with the live camera feed stuck on a loading screen.
Won't be able to swerve door-to-door salespeople, unfortunately.
ITPro's Features & Multimedia Editor, Rory Bathgate, has had trouble accessing HMRC services, having been met with an error message upon login.
This isn't the first major IT outage we've had in the last 18 months. Last year, a botched software update at CrowdStrike sent Windows devices worldwide into meltdown, severely disrupting air travel
Disruption lasted several days, forcing businesses to manually implement updates on a plethora of devices globally.
AWS appears to have "identified a potential root cause" of the issue.
"Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1," the company said in an update.
This is essentially a method through which companies can connect to AWS servers and run platforms.
The cloud computing giant says it's working at pace to "accelerate recovery".
Banking customers are also experiencing disruption as a result of the AWS outage, with customers at Lloyds and Halifax so far reporting issues accessing mobile services.
So what services are affected by the outage? So far there's a seemingly never-ending list of major applications and platforms impacted, including:
• Amazon
• Snapchat
• Zoom
• Canva
• Coinbase
• Duolingo
• Wordle
• Signal
• Slack
As we're compiling this list, the number of services impacted is growing. Users on PlayStation Network and popular games such as Fortnite are also affected.
Notably, the ITPro team is unable to communicate via Slack as a result of the incident, meaning we're coordinating on WhatsApp.