Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The massive Cloudflare outage that struck the internet yesterday has finally been resolved, but not before causing a global digital blackout. A “latent bug” in a routine software update knocked thousands of popular platforms offline, briefly tumbling Cloudflare’s stock and leaving millions of users staring at error screens.
If you were wondering why your apps stopped working on November 18, 2025, you weren’t alone. This Cloudflare outage paralyzed services ranging from ChatGPT and X (formerly Twitter) to Spotify and Canva, serving as a stark reminder of the fragility of the modern web’s centralized infrastructure.
The Great Disconnect: Timeline of the Cloudflare Outage
The Cloudflare outage began around 11:20 UTC (6:20 AM ET) on Tuesday, sending shockwaves through the digital ecosystem. Users attempting to access their favorite sites were met with widespread “500 Internal Server Error” messages or a cryptic prompt asking them to “Please unblock https://www.google.com/search?q=challenges.cloudflare.com.”
The “Latent Bug”: Not a Cyberattack
Despite initial fears of a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, Cloudflare confirmed that the culprit came from inside the house. According to a post-mortem released by the company, the outage was caused by a faulty configuration file update within its Bot Management system.
“In short, a latent bug in a service underpinning our bot mitigation capability started to crash after a routine configuration change we made,” explained Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht. “This was not an attack.”
The Technical Breakdown:
- A change to internal database permissions caused a configuration file to mistakenly duplicate entries.
- The file grew exponentially in size, exceeding the system’s expected limits.
- This “bloated” file crashed the software responsible for routing traffic and mitigating threats, effectively severing the connection between users and the websites Cloudflare protects.
For nearly six hours, digital work and play ground to a halt. The disruption affected nearly every sector of the internet:
- Students couldn’t access research tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
- Remote teams were locked out of critical tools like Discord and Canva.
- Crypto traders found themselves unable to reach Coinbase during active trading hours.
- Entertainment ceased as Spotify and Letterboxd failed to load.
- Infrastructure sites, including NJ Transit, went dark.
Even Downdetector, the site users flock to during a Cloudflare outage, struggled to stay online due to the immense traffic surge.
What Caused This Cloudflare Outage?
Despite initial fears of a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, Cloudflare confirmed that the culprit came from inside the house. According to a post-mortem released by the company, the outage was caused by a faulty configuration file update within its Bot Management system.
Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht explained the technical failure on X:
“In short, a latent bug in a service underpinning our bot mitigation capability started to crash after a routine configuration change we made. This was not an attack.”
The Technical Breakdown
The root cause of this Cloudflare outage was procedural rather than malicious:
- A change to internal database permissions caused a configuration file to mistakenly duplicate entries.
- The file grew exponentially in size, exceeding the system’s expected limits.
- This “bloated” file crashed the software responsible for routing traffic and mitigating threats, effectively severing the connection between users and the websites Cloudflare protects.
Market Jitters and The “Single Point of Failure”
The incident had immediate financial repercussions. Cloudflare (NET) shares dropped approximately 4% in pre-market and early trading as investors reacted to the reliability concerns. By 1:06 AM UTC on November 19, Cloudflare declared the incident fully resolved, though residual sluggishness persisted for some users.
This event is the latest in a string of high-profile infrastructure failures that have rocked the tech world in late 2024 and 2025, following a major AWS outage in October and the CrowdStrike incident earlier this year.
Because Cloudflare acts as a “reverse proxy” for nearly 20% of the web, a single glitch in its system can instantly darken a significant portion of the internet. As one cybersecurity analyst noted, “When a Cloudflare outage occurs, it becomes obvious very quickly just how centralized our digital lives have become.”
What To Do During a Cloudflare Outage
While server-side issues are out of your control, knowing how to diagnose a Cloudflare outage can save you frustration. Here is what you should check next time services go dark:
- Check Official Status Pages: Visit Cloudflare Status to see if a fix is in progress.
- Verify Local Connection: Ensure your own ISP isn’t at fault by loading a major site that doesn’t use Cloudflare (like Google).
- Use a VPN: Sometimes, outages are regional. Switching your location via VPN might route your traffic through a functional data center.
- Wait it Out: Refreshing aggressively can actually worsen the server load once the system begins to recover.
