Major AWS outage hits websites and apps, SA among affected

According to AWS’s official Health Dashboard:

“We are experiencing increased error rates and latencies across multiple AWS services in the US-East-1 Region due to DNS resolution issues impacting the DynamoDB API endpoint.”

The issue affected services that rely on DynamoDB and interconnected systems, including IAM updates and DynamoDB Global Tables.

AWS engineers have implemented initial mitigations, and early signs of recovery have been observed for some affected services.

However, intermittent failures and latency may continue as the company works toward full restoration (AWS Health Dashboard).

Globally, major platforms dependent on AW, including gaming, social media, and creative tools, experienced disruptions.

While AWS has not released specific information about regional impact, various reports indicated that South African users may have encountered difficulties accessing online services, from banking platforms to video conferencing and gaming applications.

These reports have not been independently verified, but they highlight the potential reach of the outage.

In a statement addressing the incident, AWS noted:

“Our engineers are actively investigating the root cause of the issue and are working to restore full service as quickly as possible. We apologise for the impact this may have on customers and thank them for their patience.”

Locally, industry observers say the outage underscores the growing dependence of South African businesses and consumers on cloud infrastructure.