Several popular websites were down on Tuesday. This affected many users. X and ChatGPT were among the affected sites. The problems stemmed from Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a major internet infrastructure firm.
Thousands of users reported issues. They reported the issues to Downdetector. This happened shortly after 11:30 GMT.
Cloudflare said a “significant outage” occurred. It was due to a configuration file. This file was meant to handle “threat traffic.” The file didn’t work correctly. This caused a software crash. The software handles traffic for Cloudflare’s services.
Cloudflare apologized to its customers. It also apologized to the internet. The company stated any outage is unacceptable. Cloudflare said the issue was resolved. However, some services might still have errors. This could happen as they came back online.
Many apps and websites were affected. Users reported delays. They also reported technical glitches. These issues occurred when using various services. Grindr, Zoom, and Canva were among the affected services.
X (formerly Twitter) displayed a message. The message indicated an internal server problem. The problem was due to a Cloudflare “error.”
ChatGPT’s website also showed an error message. The message told users to unblock challenges cloudflare.com.
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a huge provider of internet security across the world, carrying out services such as checking visitor connections to sites are coming from humans and not bots.
It says 20% of all websites worldwide use its services in some form.
The range of sites affected was demonstrated by the fact that Downdetector itself-a site many flock to when sites stop loading or appear to have issues-also displayed an error message as many tried to access it on Tuesday.
Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, which monitors the connectivity of web services, said the outage “points to a catastrophic disruption to Cloudflare’s infrastructure”.
“What is striking is how much of the internet has had to hide behind Cloudflare infrastructure to avoid denial-of-service attacks in recent years,” he told the BBC – highlighting how the company aims to protect sites against malicious attempts to overwhelm them with traffic requests.
He said that however, because of this – and the convenience of its services – it had also become “one of the internet’s largest single points of failure.”
Cloudflare has emphasized that the issue was due to a technical fault.
“To be clear, there is no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity,” it said in its statement.
The company’s share price was trading about 3% lower shortly after 15:00 GMT.
Problems with Cloudflare’s services follow an outage impacting Amazon Web Services last month that saw more than 1,000 sites and apps knocked offline.
Soon after, another major provider of web services was affected: Microsoft Azure.
“The outages we have seen in recent months only bring into sharp focus a dependence on these fragile networks,” added Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET.
“Quite often, companies are forced to rely heavily on Cloudflare, Microsoft, and Amazon when it comes to hosting their websites and services, given the lack of alternative options for them.
Disclaimer
NextNews strives for accurate tech news, but use it with caution - content changes often, external links may be iffy, and technical glitches happen. See full disclaimer for details.