Today, November 18, 2025, Cloudflare — one of the backbone companies behind much of the internet’s infrastructure — suffered a major global outage. Cybernews+2The National+2
- The disruption started around 11:20 UTC according to Cloudflare’s internal timeline. Reddit+1
- Users reported widespread 500 Internal Server Errors, meaning many websites and services relying on Cloudflare failed to load or became inaccessible. Nairametrics+2Cybernews+2
- A lot of high-profile platforms felt the impact: ChatGPT, X (formerly Twitter), Canva, as well as parts of Cloudflare’s own dashboard and API. Reuters
What Caused the Outage?
Cloudflare identified the root cause as a software bug, not a cyberattack:
- A permission change in one of Cloudflare’s database systems caused duplicate entries in a “feature file” used by its Bot Management system. Reddit+2Reddit+2
- This file was much larger than expected, which triggered a cascade of errors when distributed across Cloudflare’s network. Reddit
- Because of that, many of Cloudflare’s proxy services failed and generated 5xx errors (server errors) widely. Cybernews
- Cloudflare engineers eventually rolled back to a clean version of the file, restarted relevant services, and restored normal operations. Reddit+1
Cloudflare claims there was no malicious activity or external attack behind the disruption. Reddit
How Cloudflare Fixed It
- The company “implemented a fix” relatively quickly and said error levels dropped. Dawn+1
- They are continuing to monitor performance to ensure full recovery. Khaleej Times
- According to their status updates, it’s now considered “safe to re-enable” services that were temporarily disabled. Reddit
Why This Outage Is a Big Deal
- Internet Fragility Exposed
This kind of outage shows how dependent many major websites and apps are on a few infrastructure providers. When Cloudflare goes down, a lot of the internet goes down. The National+2Gulf News+2 - Economic Impact
Some analysts estimate that every hour of downtime like this could cost companies billions (directly or indirectly) due to lost transactions, frustrated users, or degraded service. Cybernews - Trust & Reliability Questioned
For businesses that rely on Cloudflare for security (like protection from DDoS attacks), this outage is a reminder: even “trusted” providers can fail. Many are likely to revisit their redundancy strategies. The National - DevOps Lessons
The root cause — a misconfigured or unexpectedly large config file — is a warning: you must validate config changes, have rollback plans, and guard against assumptions in internal pipelines. Reddit
What Should Users / Businesses Do Now
- If you run a website: Check whether your site’s performance or uptime was affected; review whether your Cloudflare failover or redundancy is strong enough.
- If you rely on third-party apps: Expect that even highly trusted platforms can go down — build in some patience and alternative paths.
- For future resilience: Consider multi-layer architecture — don’t put all your eggs in one provider’s basket, even for “infrastructure you don’t think about.”
Final Thoughts
Cloudflare’s outage today is a powerful reminder: even the “plumbing” of the internet is not immune to bugs. When a company that helps protect and deliver so many websites has a hiccup, the ripple effects are massive. But on the upside, Cloudflare’s transparency about the cause, its rapid fix, and its commitment to improving its systems give some confidence that they’ll learn from this.
That said — for anyone building tech-reliant products in 2025, this should renew conversations about redundancy, backups, and failure design.