The backstreet San Francisco tech firm that triggered a worldwide internet freakout

In the early morning hours on Tuesday 8 June, thanks to an obscure, San Francisco-based cloud computing firm housed between an ancient scuba diving shop and an only slightly less-ancient US post office, pretty much the entire internet ground to a halt.

The alarm was sounded quickly. More than 20,000 users on Reddit reported problems. Another 2,000 or so said Amazon-related services were having hiccups. Soon came, of course, an official hashtag emerged, #InternetShutdown, as did the meta social media commentary from brands trying to ride the wave of general internet chaos, like candy bar maker KitKat, who told users, “Guess it’s time to Have A Break”.

Companies and governments ranging from PayPal and Amazon, Etsy and Pinterest, the New York Times and CNN, the official gov.uk websites – they all were down. All told, thousands of entities around the world were affected.