Cloudflare outage: Latent bug triggers global disruption affecting X, Spotify, ChatGPT and more

A major Cloudflare outage on Tuesday disrupted platforms like X, Spotify, ChatGPT, Shopify and transport services worldwide, after a latent bug in Cloudflare’s network triggered widespread service failures and slowdowns.

A significant global outage on Tuesday briefly disrupted several major online services after a “latent bug” inside Cloudflare’s infrastructure caused widespread traffic failures. Platforms including X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Spotify, Canva, Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, and Moody’s website faced outages or severe slowdowns for nearly an hour. Cloudflare, which handles an estimated 20 per cent of global internet traffic, said the problem originated from its bot-mitigation system and was not the result of an attack.

What caused the outage

Cloudflare’s chief technology officer Dane Knecht released a detailed explanation shortly after services began recovering. According to him, a latent bug in a core service supporting Cloudflare’s bot-mitigation layer began crashing after a routine configuration update. This triggered cascading failures across multiple systems and caused a broad degradation of Cloudflare’s network.

Knecht clarified that this was not a cybersecurity incident. Instead, an internal fault amplified unexpectedly across the network. He acknowledged that Cloudflare “failed” its customers and the wider internet, adding that the team was conducting a full internal review to ensure the problem does not reoccur.

Impact on global services

The outage affected several high-traffic platforms across regions. Users reported login issues, slow loading times, and “Error Code 500” messages. Moody’s website, for instance, directly directed users to Cloudflare’s status page.

Transport systems relying on Cloudflare-based infrastructure were also hit. New Jersey Transit reported that some of its online services were loading slowly or intermittently. In France, national railway operator SNCF said its website was partially unavailable, warning travellers that schedules and travel information might be outdated during the incident.

Cloudflare’s stock reportedly dipped by around 1.5 per cent in early trading after news of the outage spread.

Recovery timeline and Cloudflare’s response

Cloudflare restored most network traffic by 14:30 UTC (20:00 IST), but internal systems such as the dashboard and customer API interfaces required more time to stabilise. Knecht later said that the control plane was “fully available” again, though engineers continued monitoring the systems to ensure complete recovery.

Cloudflare also said it would publish a full technical analysis breaking down exactly how the bug was triggered, how the failure cascaded, and the steps being implemented to strengthen its infrastructure.