A significant internet outage on Tuesday, 18 November, caused widespread disruptions, taking down several major online platforms. The problem originated from Cloudflare, a critical internet infrastructure company that provides services to thousands of websites globally.
What Caused the Widespread Disruption?
Cloudflare initially described the issue as an 'internal service degradation'. The company's system status site alerted users that some services were being intermittently impacted and that their team was focused on restoring operations. The situation escalated into what the company later identified as a 'global network outage', which led to widespread failures of APIs and user dashboards.
Providing a technical explanation, the company's Chief Technical Officer, Dane Knecht, stated that the outage was not the result of a cyberattack. Instead, he revealed that a routine configuration change triggered a latent bug in a service that supports Cloudflare's bot mitigation capability. This bug caused the service to crash, which then cascaded into a broad degradation of their entire network and other services.
Websites and Services Affected by the Crash
The ripple effect of Cloudflare's problems was felt across the internet. Popular websites and services including X, Spotify, PayPal, Canva, and Perplexity experienced downtime and performance issues. The outage tracking website, Downdetector, itself registered a massive spike in user complaints about various websites not working. Ironically, Downdetector also struggled to load for many users because it, too, relies on Cloudflare's infrastructure.
Resolution and Company Apology
When asked by a user on X how long a fix would take, CTO Dane Knecht confirmed that the issue had been resolved. In a public statement on the platform, he did not mince words, acknowledging the company's failure. 'I won’t mince words: earlier today we failed our customers and the broader Internet,' Knecht said, issuing a direct apology for the impact.
He emphasized the importance of transparency and promised that Cloudflare would share a detailed breakdown of the incident within a few hours. Furthermore, he assured users and customers that work was already underway to prevent a recurrence. 'The trust our customers place in us is what we value the most and we are going to do what it takes to earn that back,' he added, committing to restoring faith in their service.
