Global internet disrupted as Cloudflare suffers major outage
Large swathes of the internet experienced significant access issues this morning following a major service degradation at Cloudflare, one of the world’s most critical internet infrastructure providers.
The outage, which began around 11:00 UTC (11:00 GMT), has crippled services for a host of popular websites and platforms, drawing immediate comparisons to recent outages at other major cloud providers.
Cloudflare, which offers services like Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and DDoS attack protection to millions of websites, confirmed an internal issue impacting multiple customers with “Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing.”
Professional Web Design for SMEs
We help businesses and brands scale their customer acquisition and thrive online. Let Ghana’s leading web design agancy develop a premium website for your business today. Click the quote button below to get started;
The technical glitch at Cloudflare has led to service disruptions across numerous high-profile platforms, underscoring the internet’s heavy reliance on a handful of core infrastructure companies.
- Social Media: X (formerly Twitter) was one of the most visible sites hit, with thousands of users reporting issues logging in or accessing the platform.
- AI and Tech: Services like OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT), AWS (Amazon Web Services), and even the outage tracking site DownDetector were affected, ironically making it difficult to monitor the full scope of the problem.
- Streaming and Entertainment: Spotify users reported problems with the music streaming app, often being unable to open it. League of Legends and film-reviewing site Letterboxd were also impacted.
- Financial and Corporate: PayPal and Bet365 were among other services flagged by DownDetector. One individual reported being unable to book holiday time off via their internal HR system, illustrating the real-world impact of the outage.
Affected users often encountered a message indicating an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network” or being told to “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.”
Cloudflare was quick to acknowledge the problem, initially posting that they were “investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers.”
| Time (UTC) | Status Update | Key Details |
| 11:48 | Confirmed widespread issues. | Investigating an issue with Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing. |
| ~12:28 | Initial signs of recovery. | We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates. |
| ~13:08 | Identified and implementing fix. | The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. |
| ~13:14 | Recovery of key tools. | Cloudflare Access and WARP services have recovered and returned to pre-incident error rates. WARP access, which was temporarily disabled in London as a remediation effort, was later re-enabled. |
Despite the official update on the fix being implemented, subsequent reports suggested that services continued to stutter, with Cloudflare’s status page later reverting to “We are continuing to investigate this issue,” indicating persistent challenges in full recovery.
Cloudflare is a vital layer of the modern internet. It acts as an intermediary, sitting between website servers and users. Its services are crucial for:
- Security: Defending websites against cyberattacks, such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.
- Performance: Speeding up website loading times through its Content Delivery Network (CDN) by caching content closer to end-users.
The widespread outage highlights the fragility of the modern web, where the failure of a single, central infrastructure provider can lead to a simultaneous collapse of services across seemingly unconnected platforms.
As Graeme Stuart, Head of the Public Sector at cybersecurity firm Check Point, noted, this follows a pattern seen with recent outages at other major providers: “When a platform of this size slips, the impact spreads far and fast and everyone feels it at once.” He added that many organisations “still run everything through one route with no meaningful backup,” which leaves them vulnerable when a key infrastructure layer fails.
We at EnspireFX will continue to monitor Cloudflare’s status page and reports from affected sites to confirm when full service has been reliably restored.
