Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backbone of much of the internet, has experienced its second major outage this month. Similar to the AWS outage on October 20, this one too appears to be widespread. Reports suggest disruptions across websites, apps, and cloud-based platforms. As reported by DownDetector, the incident started Wednesday (October 29) and it affected services ranging from e-commerce and social media websites to enterprise tools and streaming platforms. As per DownDetector, thousands of users reported issues accessing AWS-hosted services. The outage appeared to impact multiple regions, though AWS has disputed the extent of the disruption, stating, “AWS is operating normally and this reporting is incorrect.” The company urged users to rely on its official Health Dashboard for accurate service status.

What went down

Websites and platforms facing outage:

The outage follows a similar incident earlier this month, which lasted nearly 15 hours and was traced back to a DNS failure triggered by simultaneous updates from two automated systems. That disruption cost Amazon an estimated $581 million in potential insured losses.

Root cause and response

While AWS has not so far confirmed the latest outage, reports suggest that it may be related to ongoing infrastructure stress in the US-EAST-1 region, one of AWS’s busiest data centers. The October 20 outage originated there and exposed vulnerabilities in centralized cloud architecture. AWS has promised to “learn from this event” and improve availability. However, the recurrence of outage within less than 10 days has raised concerns among developers, businesses, and cybersecurity analysts.

The broader impact

With AWS powering over 30% of the global cloud market, even brief outages ripple across industries. The incident highlights the risks of over-reliance on a single cloud provider and has reignited discussions around multi-cloud strategies and resilience planning.