Massive Outage of Websites Reported as Cloudflare Goes Down

Numerous major platforms are impacted by the Cloudflare servers.

A lobby window at the headquarters of Cloudflare in San Francisco, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2022. Eric Risberg/AP Photo

Websites around the world reported being inaccessible due to Cloudflare servers crashing. These include platforms such as X and ChatGPT.

Cloudflare is a content delivery network that provides network security and enhances loading times for websites by making use of servers located across the globe for faster access to information.

Almost all major platforms, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Shopify, and Amazon, employ Cloudflare servers.

According to recent data from Downdetector, X, Spotify, OpenAI, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Verizon, YouTube, Claude, DoorDash, Zoom, Google, and Reddit are currently facing downtime issues in the United States. Downdetector was also rendered briefly unavailable.

Many websites were still down as at 9 a.m. ET.

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Cloudflare spokesperson said: “We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare’s services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare’s network to experience errors.

“We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic.

“We will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com.”

According to an earlier update, the company said it has “re-enabled WARP access in London.”

On Oct. 20, AWS went down, resulting in major web-based disruptions that included many of the popular web platforms.

The outage lasted for approximately three hours for some websites, and longer for others. Downdetector showed widespread access failures on Amazon, Coinbase, Ring, Snapchat, Reddit, Slack, United Airlines, Zoom, and multiple online gaming networks, including those for Fortnite, Roblox, Pokémon Go, and Epic Games services at the time.

According to Cloudflare, its servers manage and protect traffic for 20 percent of the internet, handling “trillions of requests daily,” from businesses to bloggers.

According to data from online analysis tool Builtwith, there are nearly 40 million live websites using Cloudflare, with more than 19 million in the United States.

In early September, Cloudflare blocked one of the largest-ever distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks recorded.

A DDoS attack is characterized by abnormally large amounts of traffic, directed by malicious forces, to a server or network. The traffic overwhelms the target, making it difficult or impossible for normal users to access the system.

It is unclear whether cyber attacks caused the latest server downtime.

Shares of Cloudflare opened low on Tuesday. The price was volatile as of 9:50 a.m.

“A fix has been implemented, and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal,” the company announced in an update.

“Some customers may be still experiencing issues logging into or using the Cloudflare dashboard. We are working on a fix to resolve this, and continuing to monitor for any further issues.”