Major Outage Takes Down Websites, Airports, and Services
An internet infrastructure outage has caused widespread disruption for numerous websites and services, including major Australian airports, Uber, and ChatGPT. The issue was quickly identified but lasted for several hours, affecting popular platforms such as Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, and Moody’s credit ratings service.
At around 11:50am GMT on Tuesday, Cloudflare, a content delivery network and security services provider, announced that its global network was experiencing issues. The $70 billion company, which boasts handling 20% of web traffic and serving millions of customers, including 35% of the Fortune 500, stated that it was aware of and investigating the problem.
The outage impacted multiple customers, causing widespread 500 errors and failure of Cloudflare’s dashboard and API. The company worked to understand the full extent of the problem and implement a fix, which was rolled out at approximately 1:45am on Wednesday. However, intermittent errors continued for several hours, though they were gradually reduced.
Numerous websites and services were affected by the outage, including major Australian airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. Downdetector, a site that uses Cloudflare to verify users, also experienced issues before returning to functionality. Other services that were impacted included Amazon Web Services, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, film site Letterboxd, dating app Grindr, popular online game League of Legends, and design app Canva.
Cloudflare, based in San Francisco, operates behind the scenes to make the internet faster and safer. However, when problems arise, it can cause massive disruptions for internet users, as noted by cybersecurity expert Professor Mike Chapple. He explained that Cloudflare sits between devices and websites, acting as a protective barrier and improving website performance. However, when it fails, it can cause significant digital gridlock, affecting a large portion of the internet.
The impact of this outage was felt globally, with reports of service disruptions from users of Amazon Web Services, film site Letterboxd, and even national railway company SNCF in France. In the United States, New Jersey Transit and New York City Emergency Management also reported issues with their digital services.
Although the issue has been resolved, this is not the first time an outage has caused significant disruptions for online services. In October, Amazon experienced a massive outage of its cloud computing service, taking down a broad range of platforms such as social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming, and financial services. While these incidents are rare, they serve as a reminder of the potential impact of internet infrastructure failures.