Large parts of the internet aren’t working after a technical outage at web infrastructure firm Cloudflare. Websites including ChatGPT, X and Zoom are among those affected by the outage.
Reports of the Cloudflare issues first started appearing 06:00 am EST on DownDetector, with a spike of around 10,000 reports. Cloudflare confirmed it was investigating an issue that “potentially impacts multiple customers.”
Several of the sites came back online before going down again due to the issue.
At 08:09 am EST Cloudflare said it had identified the issue and is working on a fix.
In a later update on its system status page, it added: “We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts.”
“We are continuing working on restoring service for application services customers,” Cloudflare said in its latest update.
Cloudflare offers network and security services that many websites rely on to operate — which means if it goes down, these sites will fail to work.
The Cloudflare outage comes just weeks after an outage at Amazon Web Services left multiple websites unusable for hours.
Cloudflare Outage Highlights Reliance On ‘Fragile Networks’
The incident underscores the critical role edge-infrastructure providers play in the functioning of large swathes of the internet and highlights the risk of centralised dependency in digital services, according to experts.
Outages over the last few months have “highlighted the reliance on these fragile networks,” says Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor, ESET. “Companies are often forced to heavily rely on the likes of Cloudflare, Microsoft and Amazon for hosting their websites and services, as there aren’t many other options.”
The problems causing these outages have occurred due to Domain Network System problems, which are most likely overwhelmed, says Moore. The technology is based on “an outdated, legacy network” that redirects words in web addresses into computer-friendly numbers. “When this system fails, it catastrophically collapses and causes these outages.”
“When a platform of this size slips, the impact spreads far and fast, and everyone feels it at once,” says Graeme Stewart, head of public sector at Check Point Software says.
It is also significant from a cybersecurity point of view, says Stewart. “Any platform that carries this much of the world’s traffic becomes a target. Even an accidental outage creates noise and uncertainty that attackers know how to use. If an incident of this scale were deliberately triggered, the disruption would spread across countries that use these platforms to communicate with the public and deliver essential services.”
The Cloudflare outage is certainly causing disruption for multiple sites and the people that use them. I’ll keep this article updated with any further news.
