Cloudflare outage takes down major websites, including X and Spotify
What's the story
A technical glitch at Cloudflare has caused widespread disruption on the internet, affecting several popular websites. Users trying to access platforms like X, Letterboxd, Canva, Spotify, and OpenAI's ChatGPT were greeted with an error message indicating that the page couldn't be displayed due to issues with Cloudflare. The company provides essential internet infrastructure services such as cybersecurity tools and traffic management systems for websites.
Analysis
Cloudflare acknowledges the issue, investigation underway
In light of the disruption, Cloudflare has confirmed that it is looking into an issue affecting multiple customers. It added that further details would be shared as more information becomes available. Notably, even Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, was affected by this technical problem.
Impact
Cloudflare's services impact a wide range of websites
Cloudflare's internet infrastructure services are used by companies worldwide, often without users even realizing it. This means that a wide range of seemingly unrelated websites were affected by the outage, just like with a similar technical issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS) last month. The problems started around 5:00pm IST, but some sites appeared to load when refreshed during this time.
Steps
Cloudflare's update on the ongoing issue
Cloudflare posted an update acknowledging the issue around 15 minutes after it started affecting websites. The company said it was "continuing to investigate this issue" but didn't provide any indication of knowing what caused the problem or how to fix it. Users trying to access affected websites were shown a message saying there was an "internal server error on Cloudflare's network" and were asked to "please try again in a few minutes."