Computer says d'oh!

Amazon Web Services failures down multiple systems & sites

- BY RECORD REPORTER

A STRING of companies faced online chaos yesterday as Amazon Web Services went down.

Snapchat, HMRC, Halifax and Lloyds were just some of the major sites affected by the huge outage.

One expert said: "When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu."

AWS is the world's largest cloud computing provider and offers a wide variety of services, including storage, databases, machine learning and security tools.

Downdetector, a website which tracks complaints about online services, showed a spike in reports yesterday morning, including more than 2681 at AWS and 500 reports of issues for the HM Revenue & Customs website by 9am.

Software giants Slack and Ring were also affected.

Reported outages on Downdetector appeared to spike between 9am and 10am for most services and then decline through the morning, with AWS stating at 10.27am it had seen "significant signs of recovery".