The internet is at war (and no one told you): clouds in flames, dns collapse and a tsunami of hostile traffic

The internet is at war (and no one told you): clouds in flames, dns collapse and a tsunami of hostile traffic

When two of the largest cloud platforms on the planet stumble almost back-to-back, something far bigger is going on. In the past 10 days we’ve seen:

• Microsoft Azure global outage (October 29): A wide-scale interruption affecting Microsoft 365, Xbox, Azure portals and major retailers/airlines. Microsoft confirmed a configuration change issue, and multiple outlets identify it as a DNS & edge-network fault.
  • Associated Press: “Microsoft deploys a fix to Azure cloud service that’s hit with outage” (Oct 29)  -Source:https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-downdetector-service-disruption-0deffbd09c09ca4640c2f5452a9e483e
  • The Verge: “Microsoft says it’s recovering after Azure outage took down 365, Xbox, and Starbucks”.
  • Source:https://www.theverge.com/news/809142/microsoft-azure-xbox-365-is-down-outage
  • DatacenterKnowledge: “Microsoft Azure experiencing outage due to DNS issue”.
  • Source:https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/outages/microsoft-azure-outage-web-services-down-as-dns-issue-unfolds
  • BleepingComputer: “DNS outage impacts Azure and Microsoft 365 services”.
  • Source:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-dns-outage-impacts-azure-and-microsoft-365-services/
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage (October 20): Amazon’s cloud suffered a significant fault beginning in the US-EAST-1 region with DNS resolution issues tied to their DynamoDB service. Thousands of customer services affected globally.
  • The Guardian: “Amazon reveals cause of AWS outage that took everything from banks to smart beds offline”.
  • Source:https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/24/amazon-reveals-cause-of-aws-outage
  • The Register: “Today is when Amazon brain drain finally caught up with AWS”.
  • Source:https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/
  • Network World: “AWS DNS error hits DynamoDB, causing problems for multiple services and customers”.
  • Source:https://www.networkworld.com/article/4075446/aws-dns-error-hits-dynamodb-causing-problems-for-multiple-services-and-customers.html
  • Tom’s Guide: “How the AWS outage happened — and why it’s breaking the internet”.
  • Source:https://www.tomsguide.com/tech/how-the-aws-outage-happened-and-why-its-breaking-the-internet

CRN: “AWS’ 15-Hour Outage: 5 Big AI, DNS, EC2 And Data Center Keys To Know”.

Source:https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2025/aws-15-hour-outage-5-big-ai-dns-ec2-and-data-center-keys-to-know

• • The Verge (news): “Major AWS outage took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and more”.
  • Source:https://www.theverge.com/news/802486/aws-outage-alexa-fortnite-snapchat-offline

“Coincidence?” Maybe. But underground numbers show growing pressure on DNS and availability:

• Record peaks of DDoS and denial-of-service type attacks continue to be reported, targeting cloud/CDN infrastructure and exposing increased fragility of big-cloud dependency.
• Reports highlight origins of large scale hostile traffic include Russia and China, among others.

What types of attacks are happening (and why DNS is suffering)

• DNS Amplification/Reflection: Using open resolvers to multiply volume & direct to the victim (layer 3/4).
• SYN/ACK/UDP floods at high packet rate: Overwhelming network stacks/load‐balancers.
• L7/HTTP floods (application layer): Traffic that “looks legitimate” but overwhelms front‐door CDNs like Azure Front Door, etc.
• Attacks on DNS resolution/management chain: Automation, propagation failures, mis-configurations amplify damage under load—exactly what we see in the AWS and Azure incidents above.

What we must do NOW (red-alert mode)

1. Decouple DNS from hosting provider and migrate to fully-managed Anycast DNS with DNSSEC, with multi-vendor redundancy.
2. Use Multi-Region + Multi-CDN architecture with automatic failover & circuit‐breaker logic.
3. Deploy DDoS protection in layers (L3/4/7) with adaptive rate-limiting and regular flood-drills.
4. Telemetry of DNS resolution and propagation SLOs (alert on NXDOMAIN/servfail within minutes).
5. Backup identity/access plan: if your IdP/CDP fails, ensure minimal operations survive offline.
6. Strict change governance: feature flags for DNS/edge config, rollback automation, propagation quarantine.

Active threat-intelligence: monitor ASNs, geo‐blocks of high risk, challenge-pages when under attack.

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Created by Glaycon Ferreira