Executive Summary
- Cloudflare, a key internet infrastructure provider, experienced a global outage on Tuesday, causing widespread website and service disruptions.
- The incident affected numerous popular platforms, including X, Spotify, ChatGPT, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.
- Cloudflare identified and resolved the issue within approximately three hours, citing a spike in unusual network traffic as the trigger.
- While the exact cause is under investigation, an expert stated that a cyber-attack was an unlikely reason for the outage.
A significant outage at Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure and security company, caused widespread disruptions on Tuesday, affecting access to numerous high-profile websites and online services across the globe. The company confirmed it had resolved the incident after approximately three hours of elevated error rates for users of platforms such as X, Spotify, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Teams.
The issue began around 11:20 a.m. GMT when Cloudflare detected a spike in unusual traffic. Users attempting to access affected sites were met with error messages. The disruption impacted services during business hours in the United Kingdom and in the early morning in the United States. In response, Cloudflare temporarily disabled some of its services for UK users while working to implement a fix.
By 2:57 p.m. GMT, the company announced that a fix had been implemented and the incident was considered resolved, though it continued to monitor its network for stability. While the specific cause of the traffic spike remains under investigation, Cloudflare had scheduled maintenance for several data centers on the same day, but has not confirmed a link to the outage.
Professor Alan Woodward of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security commented that the cause was unlikely to be a cyber-attack, given the robust and distributed nature of Cloudflare’s network. He noted that such incidents highlight the internet’s dependence on a small number of critical infrastructure providers. Cloudflare, which provides performance and security services, reportedly handles approximately 20% of all web traffic.