A widespread internet disruption occurred earlier today following a significant outage affecting Cloudflare, a major provider of internet infrastructure and website security services. The disruption resulted in partial or complete outages for numerous online platforms and services that rely on Cloudflare to accelerate and secure their data.
Cloudflare acts as an intermediary between users and websites, providing crucial services such as protection against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and content delivery network (CDN) capabilities. This ensures stable and secure performance for millions of websites and applications globally.
The technical failure began around 11:20 AM UTC and persisted for several hours. Users worldwide encountered “500 Internal Server Error” messages, preventing them from accessing various websites and platforms. The impact was global, affecting essential services and entertainment platforms alike.
Among the affected services were major social media platforms, including X, and leading artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT and OpenAI. Music streaming services such as Spotify, online design platforms like Canva, popular gaming applications like League of Legends and Valorant, and e-commerce services like Shopify also experienced disruptions.
Cloudflare, headquartered in San Francisco, attributed the outage to a faulty configuration file update. A company spokesperson stated that the file’s growth exceeded expected limits, leading to a malfunction in the software system responsible for processing internet traffic.
The company has confirmed that there is no evidence to suggest the incident was the result of a malicious cyberattack, and it is being treated as an internal technical error. A fix was implemented around 2:30 PM UTC, and Cloudflare reported that all affected services were gradually returning to normal operation after recovery efforts. The company continues to monitor the situation to ensure full stability.
DZWatch will continue to provide updates on this developing story.
