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Cloudflare outage disrupts X, ChatGPT, and thousands of global websites
A widespread internet disruption struck major platforms including X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT on Tuesday after a technical failure at Cloudflare, a critical internet infrastructure provider. Reports of service interruptions surged shortly after 11:30 GMT, according to outage tracker Downdetector, as users encountered errors or delays across dozens of websites and applications.
Cause and company response
Cloudflare attributed the "significant outage" to a misconfigured file designed to manage threat traffic, which "triggered a crash" in its core systems. In a public statement, the company acknowledged the failure's broad impact: "We apologize to our customers and the internet in general for letting you down today," it said, emphasizing that "any outage is unacceptable" given its role in supporting roughly 20% of global websites.
The issue was resolved by mid-afternoon, though Cloudflare warned some services might experience lingering errors during recovery. It stressed that no evidence suggested malicious activity-the disruption stemmed purely from a technical malfunction.
Affected services and user reports
Beyond X and ChatGPT, users reported disruptions on platforms like Grindr, Zoom, Canva, and even Downdetector itself-ironically leaving many without a way to check outage statuses. X displayed internal server errors tied to Cloudflare, while ChatGPT directed users to "unblock challenges cloudflare.com" to proceed.
"What's striking is how much of the internet has had to hide behind Cloudflare infrastructure to avoid denial-of-service attacks in recent years."
Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks
Toker noted the outage underscored Cloudflare's dual role as both a "critical shield" against cyberattacks and a "single point of failure" for vast swaths of the web. The company's services-including bot mitigation and traffic validation-have become foundational for sites seeking protection from malicious overloads.
Broader context: A pattern of infrastructure failures
Tuesday's incident follows similar disruptions at other major providers. Last month, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage knocked over 1,000 sites and apps offline, while Microsoft Azure faced its own service interruptions shortly afterward. Cybersecurity advisor Jake Moore of ESET warned that such events expose the fragility of centralized infrastructure:
"Companies are often forced to rely heavily on providers like Cloudflare, Microsoft, and Amazon because there aren't many alternatives."
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET
Cloudflare's share price dipped by 3% following the outage, reflecting investor concerns over reliability. The company has not disclosed how many users or businesses were directly affected.
Next steps
Cloudflare said it would conduct a post-mortem review to prevent future occurrences. Analysts suggest the incident may prompt businesses to reassess redundancy strategies amid growing dependence on third-party infrastructure.
