incidents.si
INC-2026-0002SEV3 · Mediumagent-actionconfirmeddisputed

Report ties a 13-hour AWS disruption to the Kiro AI coding tool; Amazon disputes it

The Financial Times reported that engineers let Amazon’s Kiro tool make changes that led to a 13-hour disruption. Amazon confirms the event and attributes it to misconfigured access controls.

Disputed. The account of this incident is contested. The entry gives both sides as the sources state them.

Disclosed
Published
Organization
Amazon Web Services
System
Kiro agentic coding tool used on an AWS production system
Impact
13-hour disruption of one AWS service in one region in December 2025

Timeline

  • December 2025. One AWS service is disrupted for 13 hours.
  • February 2026. The Financial Times reports that the Kiro tool was involved.
  • 2026-02-20. Amazon publishes a response.

Trigger or entry point

According to the Financial Times, as relayed by both reports, engineers allowed Kiro to carry out changes on a customer-facing system.

Failure mechanism

This entry is disputed, and the two accounts differ. The Financial Times reported, citing four people, that the tool decided to delete and recreate the environment. Amazon states that the cause was “user error—specifically misconfigured access controls—not AI”. Amazon says Kiro asks for authorization before acting, and that the employee involved had broader permissions than expected. Amazon also calls the report of a second AI-related event “entirely false”. The Financial Times article itself was not available to us, so its claims are given here as relayed by The Register and Engadget.

Impact

Amazon names the affected service as AWS Cost Explorer and says one region was affected. The Register quotes Amazon as locating it in mainland China. Amazon’s own post describes the region only as one of its 39 geographic regions.

Response

Amazon published a rebuttal of the report. It does not dispute that the disruption happened or that Kiro was in use. Engadget reports that the Financial Times also described a second disruption linked to an AI tool, which is the claim Amazon rejects.

Mitigations

Amazon says it has put safeguards in place, including mandatory peer review for production access.

Sources

  1. Correcting the Financial Times report about AWS, Kiro, and AIprimary · 2026-02-20
  2. Amazon’s vibe-coding tool Kiro reportedly vibed too hard and brought down AWSsecondary · 2026-02-20
  3. 13-hour AWS outage reportedly caused by Amazon’s own AI toolssecondary · 2026-02-21

Corrections

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