The Internet is in Amazon's grip. How did one crash lead to global digital chaos?..
On Monday, the world witnessed one of the largest digital outages in recent years, following a massive malfunction at a data center belonging to Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) in the US state of Virginia, known as US-EAST-1, the location that is the backbone of Amazon's cloud architecture, and on which a number of internet services around the world depend.
Affected Locations and ServicesThe holiday started at 10 a.m. Makkah time, causing thousands of websites and applications to be disrupted in varying proportions in different countries around the world, and the most prominent affected internet services are:
social media applications such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, andsmartplatforms such as ChatGPT, popular tools such as Alexa (affiliated with Amazon), and Zoom.Gaming platforms like Fortnite and Clash of Clans.Entertainment platforms like Disney+.Services of airlines such as Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.Banking and banking services such as Venom and Robin Hood.News sites like the New York Times.UKgovernment websitesSome telecom companies such as Vodafone.Many other websites, services, and applications.Root of the problem: Domain Name System (DNS) glitch Amazonexplained that the crash was caused by a DNS glitch within the DynamoDB database APIs in Virginia's US-EAST-1 data center, causing systems to fail to identify the correct addresses for cloud servers. The DNS is closer to the Internet number book, which links website names to their digital (IP) addresses, and any glitch in it causes a disconnection between the applications and their servers.The companyconfirmed that it had implemented initial measures to mitigate the impacts, and later announced that the underlying technical glitch had been addressed, but clarified that some services would need additional time to return to normal operations.As AWS outages spread globally, its impact in Arab countries has been limited compared to other regions such as Europe and North America.Limited impact in the Arabcountries The technical portal monitored the complaints of a number of users on social media platforms, and they reported that they faced a noticeable slowdown or temporary interruption in accessing some global applications that rely on AWS servers for their back-end architecture, such as social media applications, some electronic games, and some Amazon services such as Alexa, but they quickly returned to work as the performance of these platforms improved globally hours after the crisis began.Local services and government infrastructure were not directly affected, as they relied on regional data centers and backup networks independent of the affected US-EAST-1 center in Virginia.Telecommunications industry specialists explained that the reason for the limited impact in the Arab countries and the Middle East is due to the fact that many regional platforms rely on local servers or other geographically closer servers, which has mitigated the severity of the direct impact of the US shutdown.The technical portal did not monitor any official data or comments on the disruption from government agencies or public institutions in the Arab region, indicating its limited impact on the work of services and infrastructure in the region, such as banks, airports, navigation systems, and others.The event highlights the importance of fostering digital autonomy and building an on-premises cloud infrastructure that can continue to operate even when global disruptions occur, and the reliance of startups and government platforms on on-premises data centers or regional cloud service providers can spare citizens from any future effects of such disruptions.
