Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Access to Popular Websites
A widespread outage affecting Cloudflare services on Tuesday, Nov. 18, left users unable to access a range of popular websites adn applications, including ChatGPT, Spotify, and X (formerly Twitter). The disruption began around 9 a.m. EST and lasted for approximately an hour, raising concerns about internet stability and the reliance on a single infrastructure provider.
Cloudflare, a major content delivery network (CDN) and internet security company, protects numerous websites from online threats and ensures fast loading speeds. the outage highlighted the potential for critically important disruption when such a critical service experiences issues, impacting millions of users globally. While the problem has been resolved, the incident underscores the concentration of internet infrastructure and the need for resilient systems.
According to a statement released by Cloudflare, the root cause of the outage was a configuration file used to manage threat traffic. “The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services,” the company explained. Cloudflare emphasized that ther was ”no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity.”
During the outage, users attempting to access affected websites were frequently enough presented with a message stating, “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.” With the issue now resolved, this message should no longer appear for most users.
Downdetector reported a surge in outage reports for numerous websites during the peak of the disruption, including:
* Archive of Our Own
* Canva
* Canvas
* Character AI
* ChatGPT
* claude AI
* Dayforce
* Google Store
* Grindr
* Ikea
* Indeed
* League of Legends
* Letterboxd
* OpenAI
* Quizlet
* Rover
* Spotify
* Square
* Truth Social
* Uber
* X, formerly Twitter
* Zoom
This report was contributed to by Melina Khan, USA TODAY.Iris seaton is the trending news reporter for the Asheville Citizen times,part of the USA TODAY Network.
