Dubai, UAE – Lloyds Bank and Halifax’s mobile apps went down for users on Monday after a major outage linked to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Dozens of popular websites and apps, including Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite, and Amazon’s own Prime Video, were inaccessible during the blackout. The disruption also impacted the Government’s Gateway login service – used for HMRC and other public platforms – displaying the message: “Sorry, there is a problem with the service. Try again later.”
Lloyds’ website posted a notice saying: “Sorry, we’re unable to process your request at the moment. We are currently having some technical issues.” It advised customers to contact the helpline for assistance. Users also reported similar issues with the Halifax banking app.
The disruption has been traced to AWS — Amazon’s cloud computing arm that hosts thousands of websites worldwide. “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” AWS said in an initial update on its service page.
In a later post, Amazon confirmed “significant error rates” in DynamoDB, its database system used by many sites to access stored data. “Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue,” it said, adding that 19 AWS services were affected.
Amazon’s own services, including Alexa and Prime Video, were also hit. According to Down Detector, over 5,000 reports of problems came in from Snapchat users alone.
Signal’s president Meredith Whittaker wrote: “We are aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.”
Cryptocurrency platform Coinbase also confirmed issues: “We’re aware many users are currently unable to access Coinbase due to an AWS outage. Our team is working on the issue and we’ll provide updates here. All funds are safe.”
Amazon later said it had identified a “potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region.” It explained: “Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery.”
DNS, often described as the “address book of the internet,” directs traffic between different sites and services. Amazon said a routing error in this system had prevented apps and websites from accessing their stored data, leading to widespread login failures.
AWS — the world’s largest cloud provider — allows companies to rent server space in massive data centres rather than maintain their own infrastructure. While this model offers scalability and flexibility, it can also create a single point of failure.
Previous outages have had similar ripple effects — including a major AWS crash in 2021 and a Microsoft Azure disruption in 2024 that hit airlines and train operators. Many companies have since begun relying on multiple cloud providers to minimize such risks.
