What happened
On Tuesday, 18 November 2025, Cloudflare experienced a global service outage, resulting in widespread 500 errors and rendering platforms including X, ChatGPT, and NJ Transit inaccessible. The incident also affected Cloudflare's dashboard and API. The root cause was identified as a configuration file, responsible for managing threat traffic, which exceeded its anticipated size and triggered a software crash. Cloudflare subsequently deployed a fix, restoring services incrementally. The event was not attributed to malicious activity.
Why it matters
This incident introduces an operational constraint for platform operators and IT security teams, highlighting a visibility gap in the resilience of critical third-party infrastructure. The reliance on external providers for core internet services means internal configuration management failures, such as an oversized threat traffic file, can directly impact service availability globally. This increases exposure to external operational failures and raises due diligence requirements for procurement and business continuity teams regarding vendor risk and service level agreement adherence.
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