Global Zoom Outage Caused by Server Block Imposed from GoDaddy Registry

On April 16, 2025, millions of users worldwide found themselves unable to access Zoom, the widely used video conferencing platform, due to a critical outage that lasted nearly two hours.

The disruption, which began at 11:25 AM PDT and was resolved by 1:12 PM PDT, was traced not to a cyberattack or internal technical failure, but to a server block imposed by GoDaddy Registry the manager of the .us top-level domain after a communication mishap with Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor.

Summary of the Incident

The outage left users in the US and internationally unable to access Zoom services, including meetings, phone calls, and even Zoom’s own status page.

Those already in meetings were largely unaffected, but anyone attempting to start, join, or schedule new meetings was met with error messages such as “This site can’t be reached” or “Check if there’s a typo in zoom.us”.

The impact was immediate and widespread, with tens of thousands of complaints reported at the peak of the disruption.

Zoom’s investigation revealed that its own domain name servers were functioning correctly, but DNS resolution for the zoom.us domain was failing at the top-level domain (TLD) level.

The TLD nameservers were missing records for zoom.us, effectively making the domain invisible to the internet.

The root cause was a server block placed by GoDaddy Registry due to a miscommunication with Markmonitor. GoDaddy Registry, responsible for the .us namespace, mistakenly shut down the zoom.us domain after a flawed exchange with Markmonitor, Zoom’s domain management provider.

There was no evidence of a product, security, network failure, or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack during the incident.

Once the issue was identified, Zoom, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy collaborated to remove the server block. However, because DNS records are cached across the internet, it took additional time for the fix to propagate fully.

Zoom’s instructions for Windows and Mac users advised users experiencing lingering issues to flush their DNS cache, a process that requires some technical know-how.

By 1:55 PM PDT, most services were restored, and Zoom confirmed full resolution later that afternoon. The company issued a public apology, acknowledging the critical nature of their services and the responsibility to maintain high availability.

A registry lock has been placed on the zoom.us domain, restricting server block commands and adding another layer of manual confirmation for any future changes.

Both GoDaddy and Markmonitor are reviewing their processes to ensure more robust communication and error prevention.

While the absence of a security breach is reassuring, the fact that a single miscommunication could take down a platform as essential as Zoom underscores the need for heightened vigilance and redundancy in domain management.

As businesses and individuals increasingly rely on cloud-based collaboration tools, the Zoom outage serves as a stark reminder: the resilience of digital services is only as strong as the weakest link in their supply chain.

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