AWS outage knocks out major platforms like Slack, Atlassian
On October 20, 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had a major outage in its US-EAST-1 region, knocking out big names like Slack, Atlassian, and Snapchat for a few hours.
The glitch came from DNS issues with DynamoDB, causing requests to fail or time out—even though the external network looked fine.
AWS explains cause of outage
AWS admitted there were increased error rates in the early hours of October 20. The root cause was DNS failures for DynamoDB endpoints.
While some internal systems—like launching new EC2 instances—continued to experience issues as AWS worked toward full restoration throughout the day.
Outage's global impact on businesses
This outage didn't just hit a few apps; over a thousand companies worldwide felt the impact, from online stores to messaging and gaming platforms.
For major platforms, even an hour of downtime can mean losing millions of dollars—so when AWS stumbles, the ripple effect is huge.