**Massive AWS Outage Reveals Hidden Vulnerabilities in Smart Sleep Technology**
In the early hours of Tuesday, October 21, a major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) caused widespread disruption across the internet, affecting far more than just Amazon’s own e-commerce sites. The incident exposed just how deeply embedded AWS is in the online infrastructure, bringing down not only popular sites like WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Venmo, but also critical services in banking, airlines, shipping, and financial trading platforms such as Robinhood. For many, the outage was a brief inconvenience; for others, it led to sleepless nights—quite literally.
One group particularly affected were users of the Eight Sleep Pod, a high-end smart bed system that relies entirely on WiFi and Amazon’s cloud network to function. The Eight Sleep Pod is designed with the modern tech-savvy sleeper in mind, offering customizable temperature regulation, sleep tracking, smart alarms, and even a vibrating base to mitigate snoring. All of these features are controlled through a dedicated app that communicates with the bed’s “Hub,” the system’s brain, via AWS-powered cloud services.
The AWS outage rendered these beds non-functional overnight. Without cloud connectivity, the temperature regulation ceased, the adjustable base froze in place, and alarms failed to activate. For people who had invested thousands of dollars in a bed designed to optimize sleep, this sudden loss of control was not just inconvenient—it was a rude awakening.
Lauren Allain, a journalist in the process of reviewing the Eight Sleep Pod 5 for Mashable, described her own experience during the outage. An advocate for cold bedrooms and warm beds, Allain relies on the system’s Cover and Blanket—both equipped with water channels controlled by the Hub—to keep her sleeping environment just right. When AWS went down, her bed quickly cooled to match her room’s 55-degree Fahrenheit temperature, leaving her uncomfortably cold. Attempts to use the app to restore warmth led only to error messages. It took her about an hour to deduce that the problem was not with her local devices, but with the AWS cloud. She eventually found confirmation on the Eight Sleep App’s X (formerly Twitter) account, which had posted about the outage.
Allain’s experience was far from unique. Eight Sleep’s user base, which has grown rapidly despite the system’s price—over $3,300 for the Pod 5 with Hub and Cover, and up to $6,398 with the adjustable base and Blanket—quickly took to social media to share their frustrations. Some users reported being unable to sleep due to cold beds, while others found themselves overheating, unable to turn down the temperature. A few found their adjustable bases stuck in awkward positions for the night. Many missed their morning alarms, since the system’s app-based alarm functions were also down.
This incident underscored not just the vulnerability of cloud-based smart home technology, but also how much trust and dependence users place in these systems. The Eight