Millions of users worldwide experienced a sudden disruption of Zoom services on April 16, as the popular video conferencing platform suffered a global outage traced back to a server block imposed by GoDaddy Registry.
The incident, which rendered the core zoom.us domain unavailable for nearly two hours, has raised urgent questions about the underlying robustness of critical internet infrastructure and domain management processes.
The outage hit at approximately 11:25 AM PDT, with users across the United States and international regions reporting an inability to access Zoom’s website, schedule or start meetings and use several online services.
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Though ongoing phone calls and meetings were not interrupted for users already connected, any new attempts to join or initiate sessions failed, as DNS lookups for the domain could not be completed.
The service disruption was fully resolved by 1:12 PM PDT the same day.
However, domain name system (DNS) propagation delays meant some users experienced continued access issues even after the initial fix, prompting Zoom to advise customers to flush their DNS cache manually.
Root Cause Revealed
Zoom’s technical investigation, conducted with its domain registrar Markmonitor and GoDaddy Registry, uncovered that the outage was the result of a server block mistakenly placed on the zoom.us domain by GoDaddy Registry.
The block was caused by a communication error between Markmonitor and GoDaddy, not a cyberattack or a failure within Zoom’s infrastructure.
“There was no security breach, product failure, or DDoS attack involved,” Zoom clarified in its incident report. “A miscommunication led to GoDaddy Registry erroneously disabling our domain.”
Upon identification, teams from Zoom, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy worked swiftly to lift the server block and restore service.
Given the hierarchical nature of DNS and the caching mechanisms involved, service restoration took several minutes to propagate across the global internet.
For users facing continued access difficulties, Zoom provided step-by-step instructions to flush local DNS caches on both Windows and Mac systems.
Zoom stressed the seriousness of the incident and outlined steps to prevent recurrence.
Working with both GoDaddy Registry and Markmonitor, the company has introduced stricter registry lock protocols, which now prevent unauthorized server block commands on the zoom.us domain.
“We apologize for the impact on our customers. Our goal is to ensure such an incident cannot happen again,” said a Zoom spokesperson.
The company pledged continued vigilance and collaboration with domain management partners to bolster the resilience and reliability of its global services.
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