Amazon reveals cause of AWS outage that took everything from banks to smart beds offline
Amazon has revealed the cause of this week’s hours-long AWS outage, which took everything from Signal to smart beds offline, was a bug in automation software that had widespread consequences.In a lengthy outline of the cause of the outage published on Thursday, AWS revealed a cascading set of events brought down thousands of sites and applications that host their services with the company.AWS said customers were unable to connect to DynamoDB, its database system where AWS customers store their data, due to “a latent defect within the service’s automated DNS [domain name system] management system”.DynamoDB maintains hundreds of thousands of DNS records.It uses automation to monitor the system to ensure records are updated frequently to ensure additional capacity is added as required, hardware failures are handled and traffic is distributed efficiently.
The root cause of the issue, AWS said, was an empty DNS record for the Virginia-based US-East-1 datacentre region.The bug failed to automatically repair, and required manual operator intervention to correct.AWS said it had disabled the DynamoDB DNS planner and DNS enactor automation worldwide while it fixes the conditions that led to the outage and adds extra protections.The issue also caused outages for other AWS tools as a result.Platforms including Signal, Snapchat, Roblox, Duolingo, as well as services such as banking sites and the Ring doorbell company were some of the 2,000 companies affected by the outage, according to Downdetector – a site that monitors internet outages – with more than 8.
1m reports of problems from users across the world.While services were restored in a matter of hours, the impact of the outage was felt widely.Customers of Eight Sleep – a smart bed company that connects to the internet to control the temperature and incline of a person’s bed – found they were unable to adjust the bed or the temperature of the bed during the outage because they were unable to connect to the bed in their phone app.The company’s chief executive, Matteo Franceschetti, apologised to customers on X and this week rolled out an update to its services that would allow users to control the bed’s critical functions via Bluetooth in the event of an outage.Dr Suelette Dreyfus, a computing and information systems lecturer at the University of Melbourne, said the outages showed how dependent the world was on single points of failure on the internet.
“That single point isn’t just AWS – they’re the biggest cloud provider with 30% or so of the market – but rather the cloud as a whole, which is basically just three companies,” she said,“The internet was designed to be resilient; many other channels existed for routing around problems or attacks, but we’ve lost some of that resilience by becoming so dependent on a handful of giant tech companies to provide not just data storage but also house data services,”
NatWest boss warns against higher bank taxes as lender’s profits rise 30%
NatWest Group’s chief executive has warned the government against increasing taxes on banks in the autumn budget as the high street lender reported a 30% jump in profits.Paul Thwaite said he understood the “difficult choices” that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had to make in order to help close a potential £30bn shortfall in the public finances but argued she needed to “balance fiscal discipline” with “policies that create stability, consistency and support growth”.Twaite said on a call with journalists on Friday: “I think the government should be thoughtful about signals it sends to investors who are looking at the UK as a long-term home for capital.”His comments came as NatWest reported a strong jump in profits, which grew 30.4% to £2
Dash for gold helps drive retail sales in Great Britain to three-year high
Sales at UK retailers rose unexpectedly last month to their highest level since July 2022, according to official figures, boosted by tech purchases amid the release of the new iPhone 17 as well as strong online demand for gold.Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that retail sales volumes rose by 0.5% in September, the fourth consecutive monthly increase, confounding economists’ forecasts of a 0.2% monthly drop.Sales of products at computer and telecommunication retailers grew strongly last month
Car production slumps to a 73-year low after JLR cyber-attack
Car production in British factories slumped in September to the lowest level for the month since 1952 after Jaguar Land Rover was hit by an unprecedented cyber-attack.JLR, Britain’s largest automotive employer, was forced to shut down all its computer systems at the start of September and was unable to make another car until early October.That contributed to a 27% slump in total UK car production in September compared with the same month a year earlier, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group.Car output dropped to 51,100, from 70,000 in September 2024, while output for the first nine months of the year was down by 8%. Van production has also slumped by nearly 40% so far this year, after the closure by the Vauxhall owner Stellantis of its factory in Luton
Battle between Netherlands and China over chipmaker could disrupt car factories, companies say
Car companies across Europe and Japan including Volvo, Volkswagen, Honda and Nissan have warned that the battle between the Netherlands and China over control of the chipmaker Nexperia could hit production at factories.Last week’s decision by the Dutch government to take control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker, which is based in the Netherlands, has sent shock waves across the car industry, which is already facing potential shortages of products such as magnets amid China’s latest restrictions on rare earths exports.The Hague said at the time that it was taking control of Nexperia to safeguard Europe’s supply of semiconductors and that it had invoked a cold-war era law to take effective control of the company following concerns raised by the US about the Chinese owner, Wingtech.That decision caused an immediate rift with Beijing, which banned all exports from the chipmaker, escalating the already tense relations between China and the US before a potential meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping next week in Korea.The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, whose members include Nissan, Toyota, Honda and Mazda, said on Thursday it had received a warning from Nexperia that chips could now be in short supply, potentially holding up manufacturing
UK manufacturers hit by largest drop in orders since 2020; FTSE 100 hits record high – as it happened
British manufacturers see the weakest prospects for orders over the next three months since 2020, new data from the Confederation of British Industry shows.The CBI’s latest healthcheck on manufacturing has found that business sentiment deteriorated this month, with goods producers expecting the total volume of new orders to decline in the three months to January.Business sentiment deteriorated in October. Export optimism for the year ahead also declined further. pic
Oil price jumps and FTSE 100 hits new high after Trump puts sanctions on Russian firms
Oil prices jumped and energy companies helped the FTSE 100 to a record high after Donald Trump announced new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil producers.Brent crude increased by 5.7% to $66.13 a barrel after the news of the fresh restrictions on Rosneft and Lukoil, as the US president ramps up pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.The jump in oil price also boosted shares in the energy companies Shell and BP by about 3%, which in turn helped to drive the FTSE 100 to a record high of 9,594
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