An outage at Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure company, has caused a widespread internet blackout around midday on Tuesday, 18th November, with people reporting X, ChatGPT, and other major sites as non-functional
The outage has affected several services, including X, ChatGPT, Canva, Zoom and a number of retail websites and systems. Users across the web reported problems loading websites and applications.
Why is the internet down? What caused this outage?
The crash has been put down to issues with Cloudflare’s systems. The internet infrastructure company provides essential services, including content delivery networks (CDNs) and cybersecurity, to numerous major websites.
Initially, Cloudflare reported experiencing “Widespread 500 errors” that also impacted its own dashboard and API. As Cloudflare plays a key role as a backbone for many online services, the problems within its own network spread quickly. This meant that other customer websites were affected or hit with bugs, and Downdetector, a service used to monitor internet outages, was also partially impacted.
Fadl Mantash, Chief Information Security Officer, Tribe Payments said;
“Payments are particularly exposed.”
“The infrastructure behind a single transaction relies on a chain of cloud platforms, processors, third-party APIs, authentication tools, and card schemes.”
“When any link in that chain fails, the entire journey can break.”
Internet recovery
Cloudflare issued an update suggesting that services have started to recover from the outage, The Telegraph reported. As recovery efforts continue, some customers may still experience higher-than-normal error rates.
The company also specifically mentioned disabling WARP access for users in London during its recovery attempts, advising that those users may experience connection failures. Cloudflare continues to work on resolving the issue completely following this significant disruption.
