- Amazon’s internal services were hit by the global IT outage linked to CrowdStrike on Friday.
- Employees faced email issues and blue screens; some warehouses had brief outages.
- Companies that use CrowdStrike through AWS servers also experienced connectivity issues.
Several internal Amazon services were impacted by the global IT outage tied to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Friday, Business Insider has learned.
Many Amazon employees saw their work email go down on Friday, while some using Windows laptops saw the “blue screen of death”(BSOD) pop up, according to multiple people who spoke to Business Insider and an internal memo obtained by BI.
Some Amazon warehouses also experienced outages, though this was resolved within a few hours, the internal memo said.
Amazon said through the AWS health dashboard companies running CrowdStrike’s software through Amazon Web Services cloud servers also saw connectivity issues. AWS has taken steps “to mitigate the issue,” the announcement said. AWS’s own services were “not affected by this event and continued to operate normally,” it added.
The disruption shows that even a global tech giant like Amazon, which runs the world’s largest cloud computing service in AWS, was vulnerable to the faulty CrowdStrike software update. CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software also underpins many Microsoft services, which are widely used across multiple industries, so even a small glitch can take down existing services. Numerous companies and operations, including airlines, hospitals, and retailers, saw a mass IT outage because of the same issue.
Amazon’s spokesperson didn’t provide a comment for this story.
In an internal note, Amazon told employees that it expects to resolve most of the issues by Friday at noon Pacific Time. Amazon first detected the issue at around 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, it said.
Most Amazon employees have access to their work emails as of Friday morning, one of the people said.
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@businessinsider.com). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider’s source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.