Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Web Access

A widespread Cloudflare outage on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, caused significant disruptions to internet services globally. The outage, which triggered widespread 500 errors, impacted various platforms, including social media site X, ChatGPT, and NJ Transit, rendering them inaccessible to users. Cloudflare's dashboard and API also experienced failures during the incident.

Cloudflare identified the root cause as a configuration file issue related to managing threat traffic, which grew beyond its expected size and led to a software crash. The company implemented a fix and services were gradually restored. While Cloudflare is monitoring for any residual issues, the incident is not believed to be the result of an attack or malicious activity.

Cloudflare has apologised for the disruption and is taking steps to prevent similar incidents in the future. The outage highlights the critical role Cloudflare plays in internet infrastructure and the potential impact of technical issues on a wide range of online services.