Cloudflare, a major internet infrastructure company, has resolved a significant outage that caused widespread disruptions to websites and services on Tuesday. The firm confirmed at 14:57 GMT that a fix had been implemented and services were returning to normal, though some customers may still experience issues with the Cloudflare dashboard.
The outage, which began in the early hours of US morning and during UK business hours, affected a wide range of platforms including Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Canva, Visa, Vodafone, Vinted, Asda, and M&S. Cloudflare initially reported the issue at 11:48 GMT and declared it resolved nearly three hours later.
The cause of the outage remains unclear, but Cloudflare had scheduled maintenance for Tuesday at data centres in Tahiti, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Santiago. The company temporarily disabled some services for UK users while working on a fix. Professor Alan Woodward of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security described Cloudflare as “the biggest company you’ve never heard of” and a “gatekeeper” for web traffic, but said a cyber-attack was unlikely due to the service's resilience.
The incident follows a similar outage at Amazon Web Services less than a month ago, highlighting the fragility of internet infrastructure. Cloudflare's network handles approximately one-fifth of global web traffic, and the disruption underscores the concentration of critical services among a few providers.
