On Tuesday, several major global internet platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT, became inaccessible for thousands of users worldwide due to an outage at the web-infrastructure and security firm, Cloudflare (NET.N). Cloudflare is a critical component of the internet's architecture, handling approximately one-fifth of all web traffic.
Cloudflare stated that it began investigating the internal service degradation around 6:40 a.m. ET (11:40 UTC). The company confirmed it had deployed a fix but noted that some customers might still be experiencing impacts as the service fully recovers. The incident was linked to a "spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services" starting at 11:20 UTC, which caused errors for some traffic passing through its network.
The outage prevented thousands of users from accessing various platforms, including Canva, X, Grindr, and ChatGPT. The outage tracking tool, Downdetector, which collates user-submitted status reports, showed that reports about issues with Cloudflare peaked at nearly 5,000 before dropping significantly to about 600 by 8:00 a.m. ET.
The current incident is the latest in a series of service disruptions that have recently affected major internet platforms. Previous outages include issues with Microsoft's Azure last month, and a significant disruption at Amazon AWS in October that caused turmoil for thousands of websites and popular apps like Snapchat and Reddit.
Neither X nor ChatGPT creator OpenAI immediately responded to requests for comment regarding the impact on their services.
