Canadians woke up to disruptions in several popular online services following a significant outage in Amazon's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The technical difficulties began in the middle of the night and affected a multitude of companies relying on AWS for their operations.
Among those impacted were Wealthsimple, a prominent fintech firm, and Coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange. Both companies confirmed to The Canadian Press that they faced service issues due to the AWS outage, which primarily affected the US-EAST-1 Region located in northern Virginia.
AWS serves as a critical backbone for many businesses, providing cloud services that allow companies to operate their websites, applications, and various digital platforms without the need to invest in their own server infrastructure. The reliance on AWS highlights the importance of such cloud services in the contemporary digital economy.
As the outage progressed, other popular platforms began experiencing issues as well. According to DownDetector, a well-known website for monitoring service interruptions, users started reporting problems with notable applications like Fortnite, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Instacart concurrently with the AWS outage.
Despite the initial disruptions, both Wealthsimple and Coinbase indicated that their services had largely recovered after the AWS connectivity issues began to resolve. Their quick recovery illustrates the resilience of these platforms and their ability to navigate challenges posed by cloud service outages.
As of now, AWS continues to address the technical problems, working to restore full functionality across its services. The concern over such outages has sparked discussions about the vulnerabilities that come with heavy reliance on centralized cloud computing platforms like AWS.
The events surrounding this AWS outage mark an important point in understanding the interconnectedness of online services today. As AWS remains a leading cloud service provider, incidents such as this one remind both businesses and consumers of the potential risks involved in relying on a single provider for crucial technological support.
The Canadian Press reported that the first publication of this information occurred on October 20, 2025, shedding light on the ongoing challenges and the ripple effects that cloud outages can create within the tech ecosystem.
