Major Cloudflare Outage Resolved After Disrupting ChatGPT, X, and Global Digital Services

Cloudflare functions as an intermediary layer between users and website servers.

A prominent Internet infrastructure provider announced that it has fixed an issue which caused widespread outages affecting users of various services including ChatGPT, the online game "League of Legends," and even the New Jersey Transit system early Tuesday.

By 12:44 p.m. EST, Cloudflare engineers reported that the major issues impacting their customers had been resolved, though they continued monitoring for any potential recurring problems.

Several other platforms experienced disruptions during Tuesday's outage, including social media platform X, Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, and Moody's credit ratings service. Moody's website displayed an Error Code 500, directing visitors to Cloudflare's website for additional information.

New Jersey Transit reported that portions of their digital services, including njtransit.com, might be temporarily unavailable or experiencing slow loading times. New York City Emergency Management also noted reports of city services being affected by the outage and stated they were continuously monitoring for disruptions.

In France, the national railway company SNCF's website was impacted. The company alerted customers that "some information and schedules may not be available or up to date. Our teams are working to restore these services as quickly as possible."

San Francisco-based Cloudflare operates behind the scenes to enhance internet speed and security, but when issues arise "it results in massive digital gridlock" for internet users, according to cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple.

While many people believe there's a direct connection between their digital devices and websites, the reality is that companies like Cloudflare mediate these connections, Chapple explained.

Cloudflare serves as a "content delivery network" that mirrors content from approximately 20% of global websites across thousands of servers worldwide, said Chapple, an information technology professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

"When you access a website protected by Cloudflare, your computer doesn't connect directly to that site," Chapple stated. "Instead, it connects to the nearest Cloudflare server, which might be very close to your home. That protects the website from a flood of traffic, and it provides you with a faster response. It's a win-win for everyone, until it fails, and 20% of the internet goes down at the same time."

Last month, Microsoft deployed a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that prevented users from accessing Office 365, Minecraft and other services. The technology company indicated on its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage.

Additionally, Amazon experienced a significant outage of its cloud computing service in October. While the company ultimately resolved the issue, the outage disrupted a wide range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.