Amazon dismissed concerns that the massive global outage might cause chaos during Christmas, even though experts warned that this could happen.“Impact on an already tight delivery method’

Online retail is a giant The company has been struggling to regroup following a massive cloud service disruption that disrupted their shipping operations Tuesday. It also posed a threat to cause long-lasting delays during the Christmas season.  

Amazon services stuttered to a halt across the globe for seven hours from about 3:30pm GMT Tuesday, after the company’s server crashed.

This affected everything, from flight reservations to payments apps to video streaming services and Amazon’s massive ecommerce operation.

Unfortunately for Christmas shoppers, an Amazon app used to interface with delivery drivers – Amazon Flex – went down, leaving vans that were supposed to deliver items sitting idle without communication from the firm, Bloomberg reported.

Customers who had been expecting their packages Tuesday morning were advised that delivery might be delayed by one to two business days. This was according to customer complaints posted on social media. 

Amazon spokeswoman said however that the disruption had not affected deliveries to the UK. 

MailOnline spoke to Jake Moore (a cybersecurity expert at ESET) that the issues could have an impact on Amazon’s delivery models. 

Could Amazon deliveries be impacted in the UK? Amazon's outage reportedly meant delivery drivers were unable to do their job on Tuesday afternoon

Amazon deliveries could be delayed in the UK According to reports, Amazon delivery drivers couldn’t do their jobs on Tuesday afternoon because of the outage

SITES DELETED BY AMAZON SHUTDOWN

  • Amazon
  • Prime Video
  • Amazon Music
  • Ring
  • Alexa
  • iRobot 
  • Kindle 
  • InstaCart 
  • Venmo 
  • GoDaddy
  • Associated Press   
  • Chime
  • Coinbase 
  • CashApp
  • CapitalOne
  • Roku 
  • IMDB

Moore stated that outages like these are more common due to increased internet traffic, which is a result of more people shopping online around Christmas.  

This outage could have an adverse impact on Amazon’s delivery models, but it’s possible to learn a lot from this experience. 

Moore stated that the reason for the outage was a cyberattack, which Moore claimed “many people suspect” and “cannot be completely ruled out”. 

Graham Cluley, computer expert and security blogger said that Christmas delivery won’t be affected. Cluley also stated that there is nothing to indicate the cybercrime caused the outage. 

MailOnline told him that ‘Chances exist it’s more likely that it’s a common-or garden cockup by someone rather than an intentional attempt to disrupt Amazon. 

“The downtime of Amazon Web Services can have a significant impact on other websites and services that rely on it behind-the scenes. 

DailyMail.com received confirmation from a source saying that it was not malicious hacking but a Virginia power cut that caused the epidemic.

Amazon stated that the cause of the outage could be due to problems with application programming interface (API), a protocol for building and integrating software applications.  

Amazon experienced a similar issue in July, when its services were disrupted for nearly two hours and at the peak of the disruption, more than 38,000 user reports indicated issues with Amazon's online stores

Amazon had a similar issue last July. Its services were down for more than two hours. At the height of disruption, over 38,000 customers reported problems with Amazon’s online shops.

Amazon stated that a number of services had been recovered. However, it is working to recover all services.

According to this page, outages occurred in the US East 1 AWS area hosted in Virginia. This means that not everyone may have been affected. 

Amazon stated that they are having API and console problems in the US East-1 Region. 

Amazon said late Tuesday that they were seeing some signs of recovery, but it could not give a time frame.

As of Wednesday afternoon, it seems the issues are still plaguing parts of North America but are resolved in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  

The outage came during the company's crucial and busy Christmas shopping season. Pictured is an Amazon distribution centre in Robbinsville, New Jersey

This outage occurred during Christmas, which is a busy season for Amazon. Pictured is an Amazon distribution centre in Robbinsville, New Jersey

In a message sent to delivery drivers through Amazon Chime, an internal chat app, Amazon had said during the outage that it was monitoring a network-wide technical outage impacting delivery operations.

CNBC viewed the message. It stated that drivers may not be able to deliver due to the outage.   

Downdetector.com reports that Tuesday’s outage caused streaming sites Netflix and Disney+ to temporarily go down as well as many other apps. 

Kentik’s head of internet analytics, Doug Madory said that Netflix suffered a 26 percent drop in traffic as a result of the outage. Netflix runs almost all its infrastructure through AWS.

Amazon Ring’s security cameras, Chime mobile banking app and iRobot robot vacuum cleaner manufacturer, all of which are Amazon Web Services (AWS) users, also had problems. 

Downdetector.com logged more than 24,000 instances of Amazon customers reporting problems with Prime Video or other services.

Outage tracking websites collect status reports from various sources.   

Amazon went down in the UK from 3.30pm on Tuesday as the global outage put a stop to online Christmas shopping, according to Downdetector.com

According to Downdetector.com, Amazon was down in the UK on Tuesday at 3.30pm. The global outage put an end to online Christmas shopping. 

The United Kingdom experienced widespread outages of Amazon and AWS-hosted websites, Downdetector.com maps showed

Amazon.com, AWS-hosted website sites suffered widespread downtime in Britain. Downdetector.com maps were shown.

Amazon Music is also a problem for some users. Amazon Music costs $16 per month.

According to ToolTester, Amazon experienced 27 outages in the last 12 months due to services.        

2021 has seen a deluge of catastrophic outages already – in June, a massive blackout which brought down hundreds of websites across the world was blamed on a single unnamed IT customer. 

Millions of users were unable to connect to a variety of sites, including Amazon, Spotify, PayPal and UK government.

The outage was caused by a software bug triggered when a customer for Fastly – the US cloud-computing company responsible for the problems – changed their settings, the firm said. 

MailOnline has been told by experts that there have been major outages and they are likely to continue increasing.

According to them, the solution lies in businesses moving to decentralised systems, upgrading ageing infrastructure, and creating servers more suitable for hosting more users.

There will be many more outages until that occurs.   

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THEORIES FOR WHY THE INTERNET KEEPS BREAKING? 

Human error

Many people assume that any web disruption can be linked to hacking. Experts disagree. However, it is more common for mundane causes like human error.

One cyber security expert said that IT workers for corporations, tech giants, and supermarkets often make errors. This is due to them being under pressure and needing shortcuts.

Meta’s Oct. 4 outage was ultimately caused by user error. It had been affected when an update went wrong and its servers were disconnected from the Internet.

Hacking

There have been increases in the sophistication of hacking, experts say, with numerous Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks seen recently, including on Microsoft, Google and other massive companies.

DDoS attacks involve flooding the system of a victim with internet traffic in an effort to overload and take it offline.

Meanwhile, ransomware — a form of cyberattack which locks files and data on a user’s computer and demands payment in order for them to be released back to the owner — is also on the rise.

According to the head of Britain’s cybersecurity agency, it is ‘the greatest threat to our country’ and that businesses must do more to safeguard themselves.

Traffic too high

MailOnline received a report from a Cyber Security Expert stating that Covid caused an unexpected spike in traffic, straining their infrastructure.

According to him, the cause of many outages was due to increased online usage and traffic. 

Centralised systems

Meta is one of many companies that have centralised their back-end systems. This means that there’s no single point for failure.

Meta’s case means that it could affect Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, just like last month.

One internet scientist agreed centralised systems were a problem. However, another expert stated that Meta’s outage demonstrated the advantages of a decentralised system with more reliability that doesn’t place all the eggs in the same basket. 

Ageing web infrastructure

Experts say that the World Wide Web was created in 1989 and is an “aging infrastructure”.

With the increasing traffic to the internet and the volume of users, the systems are being put under greater pressure.

One expert said that businesses should test their infrastructure, and ensure they have failsafes.