A major outage at Cloudflare on Tuesday disrupted numerous high-profile websites and services, including X and ChatGPT, for several hours before being resolved. The company apologized for the incident, attributing it to a technical glitch in its threat management system.
The outage began around 11:30 GMT (6:30 a.m. EST) on November 18, 2025, when Cloudflare experienced a significant disruption in its services. Thousands of users reported issues accessing various websites, with outage monitoring site Downdetector itself being affected due to the scale of the problem. This widespread failure highlighted the critical role Cloudflare plays in internet infrastructure.
Among the services impacted were social media platform X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI’s ChatGPT, e-commerce sites like Shopify, job search engine Indeed, and other platforms such as Grindr, Zoom, and Canva. Users encountered error messages, with X displaying internal server errors and ChatGPT showing challenges related to Cloudflare, indicating the breadth of the disruption across different sectors.
Cloudflare identified the root cause as an automatically generated configuration file used for managing threat traffic that grew beyond expected size limits, triggering a crash in the software handling traffic for its services. The company emphasized that there was no evidence of malicious activity or an attack, reassuring users that this was an internal technical failure rather than a security breach.
By approximately 9:57 a.m. EST, Cloudflare had implemented a fix and resolved the outage, though it warned that some services might still experience residual errors as they came back online. The company issued a public apology, stating that any outage is unacceptable given the critical role its services play in maintaining internet stability and security.
Cloudflare is a major internet infrastructure provider, securing about 20% of websites worldwide by protecting against distributed denial-of-service attacks and other threats. This incident underscores the internet’s reliance on such centralized services, with experts noting it as a single point of failure that can have cascading effects when problems arise.
The outage follows recent disruptions in other cloud services, including an Amazon Web Services outage last month and a Microsoft Azure issue, highlighting the fragility of modern digital infrastructure. Cybersecurity experts commented on the increasing dependency on a few key providers, urging for more robust and redundant systems to mitigate future risks.
In the aftermath, Cloudflare’s share price dipped slightly, reflecting investor concerns over service reliability. The company continues to monitor for any lingering issues and has reassured customers of its commitment to stability. As services normalize, the event serves as a reminder of the interconnected nature of the internet and the importance of continuous improvement in infrastructure resilience.
