Cloudflare, a key internet infrastructure company, has resolved a major 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 the incident was now resolved, though some users may still experience issues accessing the Cloudflare dashboard.
The outage began during UK business hours and early US morning, affecting platforms including Spotify, ChatGPT, X, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Canva, and retail sites for Visa, Vodafone, Vinted, and UK grocery chains Asda and M&S. Cloudflare initially reported the issue at 11:48 GMT and declared it resolved nearly three hours later.
The cause remains unknown, but the company had scheduled maintenance for Tuesday at data centres in Tahiti, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Santiago. Cloudflare temporarily disabled some services for UK users while implementing fixes. Professor Alan Woodward of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security described Cloudflare as a 'gatekeeper' handling a fifth of web traffic, but deemed a cyber-attack unlikely due to the service's robust architecture.
The incident follows a recent Amazon Web Services outage that also brought down thousands of sites, highlighting the fragility of internet infrastructure. Woodward noted the reliance on a small number of companies, making failures quickly apparent. Cloudflare continues to monitor for further issues.
