Internet is hit by problems as ITV, Skybet, BA and Barclays customers report online outages
Internet is hit by mystery global outage as sites including Fortnite, Delta Airlines, Amazon, AirBnb, BA, and major banks are DOWN
- Gamers, shoppers and workers globally were livid when they could not connect
- The Playstation Network, Call of Duty, Fifa and EA were reported to have issues
- Meanwhile major banks including HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds Bank were also hit
- Shoppers also vented online as they were struggling to access sites such as eBay
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The Internet has been hit by a mystery global outage as sites including Fortnite, Delta Airlines, Amazon, AirBnb, BA, and major banks went down.
Gamers, shoppers and workers across the world were left livid after they could not connect to at least 48 websites on Thursday evening.
The Playstation Network, Call of Duty, Fifa and EA were all reported to have had issues.
Meanwhile major banks including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, TSB, Tesco Bank, and the Bank of Scotland were beset by problems.
And shoppers also vented on social media they were struggling to access Argos, McDonald’s, John Lewis, eBay and Costco.
The mass outage comes just a month after another massive internet blackout brought down hundreds of websites across the world.
CNN, The New York Times, Amazon, Shopify, PayPal, Reddit, the White House and British Government lost service after a ‘service configuration’ at their server provider Fastly.
The outage has since been blamed on a single unnamed IT customer.
Downdetector, an independent outage monitor website, reported today’s stream of complaints about websites from about 5pm on Thursday.
It listed nearly 50 sites that customers were having trouble with in London.
It found tens of thousands of issues with sites based in the capital but is believed to be affecting customers across the country.
The monitor pointed to AWS, although Amazon told MailOnline ‘it has investigated and AWS services are all operating normally’.
It may be something else to do with the wider internet at a deep level, as so many sites have been hit – such as a shared API used by all sites.
Major content delivery network Akamai, which provides domain name system services, says it is experiencing problems and appeared to shoulder the blame tonight.
Many of the affected websites are featured on its customers page.
The Internet has been hit by a mystery global outage as sites including Fortnite, Delta Airlines, Amazon, AirBnb, BA, and major banks went down
Gamers, shoppers and workers across the world were left livid after they could not connect to at least 48 websites on Thursday evening
The Playstation Network, Call of Duty, Fifa and EA were all reported to have had issues
Meanwhile major banks including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, TSB, Tesco Bank, and the Bank of Scotland were beset by issues
The mass outage comes just a month after some of Australia’s major websites – including from various media outlets – crashed
The Independent claimed it was due to Akamai, a major content delivery network, that had caused the outage
Just half an hour after the sites started going down, the firm released a statement owning up to at least some of the problems.
A spokesman said: ‘We are aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service.
‘We are actively investigating the issue. If you have questions or are experiencing impact due to this issue, please contact Akamai Technical Support.
‘In the interest of time, we are providing you the most current information available, which is subject to changes, corrections, and updates.’
Akamai is a major content delivery network (CDN) firm that facilitates internet services for other companies.
A CDN is a platform of servers that helps minimise delays in loading web page content.
Jake Moore, a cybersecurity specialist at ESET, told MailOnline: ‘Web pages are located all over the world so content delivery networks are placed to distribute the data evenly by reducing the physical distance between where it’s actually held and the end user.
‘This helps users around the world view the same high quality information and content without any lag or slow loading times.
More than half of the internet’s traffic is served by a CDN, according to Akamai.
Customers took to social media to complain and joke about not being able the access the websites on Thursday night.
One wrote: Oh no. The internet is broken and I forgot to print out how to boil and egg.’
Another put: ‘The internet is all broken up due to DNS issues. If you are having issues accessing certain sites hang in there. You are not alone.’
And one added: ‘I see someone has broken the internet again. This is why we need to have a controlled programme of Kardashian disarmament.
‘Until they’re deactivated and made safe, we will all be at risk.’
Nick from Vancouver wrote on Twitter: ‘Got it back. Thanks! Seems like half the internet went down – so an understandable outage.’
Angel, 19, said: ‘It’s not just psn server issues hella big name brands are down like airlines and banks, this is bigger than that the only issue is that it’s not someone doing this it’s the people who own the internet, something up for sure.’ And one man wrote: ‘At least 30,000 websites are down worldwide.
‘There appears to be a major DNS, or Domain Name System failure that began shortly after 1100ET. DNS acts as the phone directory of the internet, translating names of websites into IP addresses.’
But another added: ‘The internet being down in certain places always makes me appreciate back country county offices who still have everything on paper and don’t put anything online. As long as that good old landline still works… we in business.’
Last month hundreds of websites around the world went down including CNN, The New York Times, Amazon, Shopify, PayPal, Reddit, the White House and British Government after a ‘service configuration’ at their server provider Fastly triggered mass outages.
It was unclear what the configuration was or whether or not Fastly intended for it to happen but it took three hours for it to be resolved.
During this time government websites, media outlets and online shopping sites experienced huge problems.
People were unable to book Covid vaccines and arrange passport renewals in Britain due to the government website being down. Some news sites could not publish.
The Verge started publishing on a live Google doc instead, but they forgot to restrict editing and random internet users started posting on the document.
The Guardian’s tech editor tweeted its content for the duration of their outage.
Fastly is a CDN (Content Distribution Network) which services businesses by letting them use its global network of servers for their own websites.
The CDN increases internet loading speeds and it also offers cheaper bandwidth but it’s all run on one network.
If that network is compromised, like it was this morning, it can prevent those companies from operating on the net at all.
Fastly said three hours after the first reports of problems the issue had been entirely resolved.
Shares of Fastly, which went public in 2019, took an initial hit but bounced back after the outage had been fixed.
