Cloudflare Outage: Major Internet Platforms Face Global Disruption
A massive technical issue at Cloudflare — one of the world’s most essential internet infrastructure providers — caused widespread service interruptions on Tuesday, affecting millions of users worldwide. Popular platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), and Spotify experienced severe slowdowns, with some services becoming completely unavailable for nearly three hours.
This disruption resembled recent outages seen on Amazon AWS and Microsoft cloud platforms, which had similarly impacted several online services over the past month.
What Is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare operates a worldwide network of servers designed to enhance the speed, safety, and reliability of websites and applications. It serves as a secure gateway between users and website servers, ensuring fast access while protecting sites from cyber threats.
According to the company, millions of websites — from businesses and nonprofits to personal blogs — depend on Cloudflare to boost security and performance. “Cloudflare runs one of the world’s largest networks,” the company states, highlighting how its technology powers safer and faster online experiences globally.
What Services Does Cloudflare Offer?
The outage, which began around 12:00 UTC, affected several of Cloudflare’s core services, including:
🔹 Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Stores cached versions of websites on global edge servers to speed up loading times.
🔹 DDoS Protection
Shields platforms from malicious high-volume traffic attacks.
🔹 DNS Services
Helps users reach the correct website servers by routing requests accurately.
🔹 Security & Firewall Tools
Blocks suspicious or harmful activities automatically.
What Caused the Outage? Has It Been Fixed?
Yes — Cloudflare has fully resolved the issue.
Initially, Cloudflare reported that a “latent bug” had triggered the outage. CTO Dane Knecht explained that the problem originated from a service involved in bot mitigation. A routine configuration change activated the bug, causing Cloudflare’s core infrastructure to degrade globally.
Knecht confirmed that traffic flow returned to normal at 14:30 UTC, although additional work was needed to restore the dashboard and API systems.
CEO Matthew Prince later emphasized that the outage was not the result of a cyber attack. He clarified that incorrect database permissions caused an internal system to generate oversized feature files. These files were propagated across the network, overwhelming Cloudflare’s systems until engineers rolled back the change and stabilized the network.
By 17:06 UTC, all Cloudflare services were fully operational.
Worldwide Impact
The outage affected numerous platforms, including:
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- Uber
- Spotify
- Canva
- Truth Social
- Letterboxd
- League of Legends & Valorant (gaming)
Cloudflare acknowledged the problem publicly, stating it was investigating widespread 500 errors and dashboard/API failures.
Amid the outage, Cloudflare temporarily disabled certain services for UK users as a precaution, later restoring WARP access in London once systems stabilized.
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