Mystery global outage wipes out websites including UPS, FedEX, Amazon, HBO Max and major airlines: 911 services ALSO go down in multiple East Coast cities
- Major service disruption hit many key websites at around noon on Thursday
- Backbone provider Akamai Technologies appeared to be the source of the issue
- Company said that the disruption was not the result of a cyberattack
- Issues seemed to be resolved within an hour after the outages first hit
- It comes a month after Akamai's competitor Fastly experiences similar outage
- A 911 outage in Virginia appears to be related to a cut fiber optic cable
A major internet outage has affected the websites of major retail, financial, logistics and travel websites, while 911 service in several Virginia cities appears to be affected by a cut fiber optic cable.
Down Detector, a service that detects whether websites are working properly or not, began reporting a series of at least 50 major website outages shortly before 12pm EST on Thursday.
The websites of UPS, Delta Air Lines, Costco, American Express and Home Depot were down, displaying domain name system (DNS) service errors.
Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery network, said in a statement that an issue with its DNS service appeared to be the reason for the outages, and confirmed that the issue was not the result of a cyberattack.
Akamai runs a global network of servers and rents out space on them to customers who want their websites to load faster, by distributing content from locations close to end users.
Last month, a similar issue with one of Akamai's competitors Fastly was blamed for a separate widespread internet outage.
Among the other potentially affected websites on Thursday were Airbnb, US Bank, FedEx, UPS, Fox News, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, AT&T, Groupon, Expedia, HBO Max and TikTok, according to Down Detector.
The filings page of the US Securities and Exchange Commission also displayed a message saying that it was 'temporarily unavailable'.
Costco's website was among those affected in what appeared to be a widespread internet outage on Thursday
Backbone service provider Akamai Technologies appeared to be the source of the outage. The company said that it had fixed the service disruption by 12.47pm
A number of global financial institutions also appeared to be impacted, including Interactive Brokers, Santander Bank, BBVA and BB&T.
Down Detector tweeted that Amazon Web Services and Oracle Cloud are also having problems, but the Amazon Web Services website appeared to be working normally.
Oracle Corp said it was monitoring the global issue related to a cloud-based DNS solution provider impacting access to many internet resources, including its own cloud services.
About 3,500 users reported issues with Airbnb's website, while nearly 1,500 Home Depot users reported problems, according to Down Detector.
Other websites that were impacted included Microsoft, Evernote, Go Daddy, Vanguard and a number of other tech or financial-centric domains, according to Down Detctor.
Akamai Technologies, a global content delivery network that provides backbone internet services, said in a statement that it is 'aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service.'
DNS is a service that translates readable domain names to machine readable IP addresses, connecting it to a server and delivering the requested page on the user's phone or laptop.
In an update at 12.47pm, the company said: 'We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations.'
We will continue to monitor to ensure that the impact has been fully mitigated,' Akamai added in the statement.
'We are continuing to monitor the situation and can confirm this was not a result of a cyberattack on the Akamai platform,' the company said.
In June, multiple outages hit social media, government and news websites across the globe, with some reports pointing to a glitch at Akamai's competitor Fastly.
Fastly said at the time the issues experienced on June 8 were down to an 'undiscovered software bug' in its system which was triggered by a single unnamed customer who updated their settings.
The filings website of the SEC was seen to be 'temporarily unavailable' on Thursday
Down Detector also indicated issued with Airbnb's site amid the widespread outage
Meanwhile, at least nine counties and three cities in Virginia reported 911 outages or call issues on Thursday.
'There appears to be a multi-state 911 outage. The issue is being addressed,' the Rockbridge County Fire-Rescue & Emergency Management said in a statement.
In Campbell County, Virginia, the Department of Public Safety said all service to the county's E-911 and non-emergency phone lines has been disrupted.
It was unclear whether the emergency services outage was related to the internet issues, with WSET-TV reporting that a cut fiber optic cable in Greyson County was potentially to blame.
The Greyson County Sheriff's Office said that CenturyLink was working to restore the cut fiber in the Marion area.
Developing story, more to follow.
