Cloudflare down latest: 'Fix' update issued after X, ChatGPT and more websites suffer mass outage

Parts of the web appear to have stopped working amid a technical problem at Cloudflare .

Visitors to websites such as X, formerly known as Twitter , ChatGPT and film reviewing site Letterboxd saw an error message that indicated that Cloudflare problems meant that the page could not show.

Cloudflare is an internet infrastructure that offers many of the core technologies that power today’s online experiences. That includes tools that protect websites from cyber attacks and ensure that they stay online amid heavy traffic, for instance.

“Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers,” the company said in a new update. “Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available.”

Tracking website Down Detector, which monitors outage, was also hit by the technical problems itself. But when it loaded it showed a dramatic spike in problems.

Affected users saw a message indicating there was an “internal server error on Cloudflare’s network”. It asked users to “please try again in a few minutes”.

The latest update from Cloudflare suggests that there might still be some issues as the company and its customers recover.

“The team is continuing to focus on restoring service post-fix. We are mitigating several issues that remain post-deployment.”

This from Alan Woodward, Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, explains both what Cloudflare is and why today’s outage spread so widely.

“Cloudflare provides a form of internet shield, preventing some forms of attack and unwanted visits from bots, as well as acting as a global distribution network for content for its clients. Those clients include some well known names such as X, Spotify and Zoom. It supports something like 30% of the Fortune 100 companies. The downside of being a gatekeeper and distribution network for such big brands is that if this vital system fails, no one can use your service be that website or app. It’s still not clear exactly what went wrong but it looks like it was a technical malfunction within Cloudflare network. This in itself is surprising as such networks are designed to avoid single points of failure.

“Although Cloudflare say their services are recovering, the high profile clients means it was highly visible and disruptive. Knock-on effects are still being felt as Cloudflare continue to investigate what happened.

“This incident, as with the recent outage at AWS, shows how reliant some very important Internet based services are on a relatively few major players. It’s a double edged sword as these service providers need to be large to provide the scale and global reach required by big brands. But when they fail the impact can be significant. This won’t be the last time one of these big providers fails and the internet suffers disruption.”

Anecdotally, it does seem that Cloudflare’s update (see below) is correct. Websites that had previously been broken such as Twitter and ChatGPT are now back to life.

The troubles might now be over, at least according to Cloudflare.

“A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved,” an update to its service status page reads. “We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.”

The troubles might now be over, at least according to Cloudflare.

“A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved,” an update to its service status page reads. “We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.”

The last two Cloudflare updates had been the same thing: “We are continuing working on restoring service for application services customers”.

Now, a new one, though it says the same thing: “We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue”.

It appears we’re still some way from a fix.

Are you being asked to unblock Cloudflare? Or even being told that you might be a security risk.

You’re not alone. Here’s why those error messages are coming up – and what you can do (which is basically nothing but wait).

The issues – which have affected everything from ChatGPT to X, and even tracking website Down Detector – have now been going on for more than two hours.

And there is no sign that they’ll be fixed soon. Cloudflare hasn’t given any indication of how long it thinks it will take. (And previously it suggested they had been fixed when it hadn’t, which suggests it is a big and perhaps hard to grasp issue.)

But it has committed that it is “continuing working on restoring service”, as part of a run of updates that are generally reassuring but give no specific information.

According to tracking website Down Detector, whole new websites are being dragged into the outage. Products as various as shopping platform Vinted and gay dating app Grindr are now showing up as having problems, all of a sudden.

(It’s worth noting however that Down Detector itself has been hit by the problems, so its tracking might not be as dependable as usual.)

“We are continuing working on restoring service for application services customers,” the latest update from Cloudflare reads. (That’s the important bit, which when fixed should let the affected websites get back online.)