What Happened to the Internet Outages Cloudflare Triggered Today?

The global internet faced major disruption after widespread internet outages linked to Cloudflare hit multiple platforms on November 18, 2025. Major services such as X, ChatGPT, Canva, Runescape, and McDonald’s kiosks experienced errors as Cloudflare’s network struggled with a sudden internal failure. The company confirmed the outage within minutes and began issuing live updates as the impact spread across sectors.

Cloudflare said the disruption began after an unusual traffic spike triggered a latent bug inside one of its mitigation systems. This caused HTTP 500 errors across its global network. Platforms that route their infrastructure through Cloudflare were immediately affected. The issue prompted monitoring teams, tech analysts, and global users to report failures across apps, websites, and essential digital tools.

Cloudflare Confirms Source of Outage as Investigations Continue

The company emphasized that the disruption was not caused by an external attack. Cloudflare’s CTO stated that a long-hidden software bug inside a bot-mitigation service began crashing after a routine configuration change. This created a cascading effect across the network and caused outages for millions of users. The CTO apologized publicly and confirmed that corrective measures were underway.

Trusted outlets such as Reuters and BBC News noted the massive real-time impact as users worldwide reported service failures. Downdetector showed more than 11,000 outage reports at peak. Cloudflare later said traffic errors were declining as fixes slowly propagated through the system. However, dashboard failures and login issues continued for many hours.

The outage affected consumer platforms and enterprise tools alike. Banks, online stores, VPN services, and corporate portals logged failures. In the U.S., workers at a nuclear facility reported that PADS, a background check system needed for visitor clearance, was also affected. While no operational risk was reported, access delays created workplace concerns.

Cloudflare also temporarily disabled WARP access in London during its troubleshooting steps. Some regions experienced higher latency as traffic was rerouted to backup datacenters. The company stressed that teams were working “all hands on deck” to restore services and promised a detailed incident report once stability returned.

How the Outage Affected Users Worldwide

The outage created ripple effects across daily life. Daycares using cloud check-in platforms switched to manual logs. Digital artists relying on Canva saw workflows stalled. Some users could not access online banking systems. Others struggled to log into games, news sites, or work dashboards. As errors spread, social media filled with reports, screenshots, and temporary workarounds.

While the disruption lasted hours, Cloudflare’s updates gradually showed progress. Error levels dropped. WARP services recovered. Some dashboards came back online. But intermittent failures continued into the evening, and users waited for full restoration.

The incident has reignited debate about centralization on the internet. Cloudflare supports a large percentage of global web traffic. Outages of this scale highlight the fragility of the digital ecosystem when a single major provider experiences issues. Analysts note that such events illustrate how widespread modern dependencies have become.

Cloudflare says a full technical breakdown will be published once recovery is complete. For now, the company insists the internet outages connected to Cloudflare were not malicious and that permanent fixes are underway.

FYI (keeping you in the loop)-

Q1: What caused the Cloudflare internet outages?

Cloudflare says a latent bug inside a bot-mitigation service crashed after a routine configuration update. The crash triggered widespread HTTP 500 errors across its network.

Q2: Were the outages caused by a cyberattack?

No. Cloudflare stated clearly that the outage was not an attack. It was an internal failure linked to software behavior under unusual traffic load.

Q3: Which services were affected during the outage?

X, ChatGPT, Canva, Runescape, and several banking and enterprise platforms were affected. Many websites using Cloudflare saw partial or full disruption.

Q4: How long did the Cloudflare outage last?

The main disruption lasted several hours. Service recovery continued into the night as global traffic stabilized and fixes propagated across datacenters.

Q5: Could future outages happen again?

Cloudflare says long-term fixes are being implemented. But analysts warn that global reliance on centralized infrastructure makes large-scale outages more likely during unexpected failures.