Social media site X, music streaming service Spotify, and AI chatbot ChatGPT experienced downtime affecting thousands of users.
Facebook, AWS (Amazon Web Services), bet365, Canva, BrightHR, and the multiplayer game League of Legends also encountered outages, as reported by Downdetector.com.
Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, faced issues that were reported by over 10,000 individuals on Tuesday morning.
The problems began around 11 am, with some websites, including X, briefly coming back online before facing additional difficulties attributed to an «internal server error on Cloudflare’s network.»
Cloudflare, known for providing network and security services to numerous online businesses, revealed that about a fifth of all global websites utilize its services.
In a server update, the company acknowledged that it was «experiencing an internal service degradation» and warned that some services might be intermittently impacted.
They stated, «We are observing services recover, but customers may still experience higher-than-normal error rates as we continue our remediation efforts.»
By 1:09 pm, Cloudflare had identified the issue and was in the process of implementing a solution.
The outage coincided with Cloudflare’s scheduled maintenance at its SCL (Santiago) data center on Tuesday.
Graeme Stewart, head of the public sector at Check Point, a cybersecurity firm known for pioneering the first firewall, commented on the situation: «The recent Cloudflare downtime aligns with the patterns seen in the recent AWS and Azure outages. These platforms are extensive, efficient, and integral to nearly every aspect of modern life.»
He further explained, «When a platform of this magnitude falters, the repercussions are widespread and immediate, impacting everyone simultaneously.»
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«Many organizations still rely on a single route without a viable backup plan. When that primary route fails, there is no alternative. This recurring vulnerability stems from concentrating a significant portion of global internet traffic into a few cloud providers,» he added.