On Friday, users around the globe faced significant internet interruptions after Cloudflare, a provider of various online services for numerous websites, experienced yet another outage.
The event caused accessibility problems across several major platforms, including Canva and even Downdetector, a popular service for monitoring outages. Numerous Indian websites and services, along with news portals, were also affected.
This incident marks the second outage for Cloudflare in under a month. A similar technical glitch in November had temporarily disrupted a variety of services, including Spotify, ChatGPT, and former US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform.
So far, Cloudflare has not issued an official statement detailing the cause or scope of the latest outage.
The unexpected shutdown prompted frustrated users to flock to social media platform X, where various hashtags related to the outage quickly began trending. Many netizens voiced their displeasure over ongoing disruptions, emphasizing how the failures had interfered with their work, business functions, and online engagements.
Compounding users’ frustrations, even Downdetector, a site where people typically turn to verify outages, was affected, leaving many uncertain about the magnitude of the disruption.
As the frequency of outages has raised concerns, users are demanding prompt action and clearer communication from Cloudflare to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
Last month, Cloudflare experienced a significant global outage due to an internal configuration error. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince had dismissed the idea of cyberattacks.
The outage impacted a myriad of major platforms, including X, ChatGPT, Canva, Discord, and many other websites and applications worldwide. In a follow-up analysis, Prince clarified that the issue arose from a change made to permissions on a ClickHouse database cluster.
The update aimed to enhance data access; however, a faulty query caused the system to retrieve much more information than intended. This mistake resulted in a crucial “feature file” used by Cloudflare’s Bot Management system expanding beyond its limits.