Large swathes of the internet, including major platforms like X and ChatGPT, experienced significant slowdowns and outages this morning, stemming from a confirmed issue within the global network of internet infrastructure giant, Cloudflare.
The company, which provides critical services like content delivery and cyberattack protection for millions of websites, acknowledged the problem at 6:48 AM ET, reporting a widespread issue impacting multiple customers.
Widespread Impact: Users across the globe have been met with “500 internal server error” messages when trying to access numerous popular sites. Initial sites reportedly affected included X, the film reviewing site Letterboxd, and even the outage-tracking website DownDetector itself.
Official Confirmation: Cloudflare’s initial statement confirmed the severity: “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing.”
Signs of Recovery: Around 7:21 AM ET, the company issued a cautiously optimistic update, stating, “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts.” However, subsequent updates have reverted to the familiar, “We are continuing to investigate this issue.”
Operational Measures: In an attempt to address the problem, Cloudflare temporarily disabled WARP access in London, impacting users in the capital attempting to access the internet via the service.
Irony of the Outage: At one point, the outage became so severe that Cloudflare’s own status page, intended to inform the public, became inaccessible, displaying its own connection error.
Possible Pre-Existing Conditions: The outage comes amid scheduled maintenance activities by Cloudflare in several data centers, including Santiago (SCL) and Miami (MIA), though the company has not confirmed if these are related to the widespread failure.
The issue has been particularly disruptive as many on the US East Coast began logging on for work, potentially exacerbating the pressure on already struggling servers.
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