Cloudflare resolves global outage after seven-hour disruption

Cloudflare has resolved a major outage that disrupted internet access across the globe, including key services in the Maldives, for nearly seven hours on Tuesday.

The issue began around 16:30 local time, with widespread reports of websites failing to load or returning server errors. Cloudflare, which powers internet requests for over 81 million websites, confirmed the disruption was caused by a spike in unusual traffic to one of its services.

In the Maldives, the outage affected online services of Bank of Maldives (BML) and Maldives Islamic Bank (MIB), as well as websites of several government agencies and media outlets. Most services were restored by 20:40, according to local reports.

Globally, the outage impacted platforms including:

• X  

• ChatGPT  

• Canva  

• Spotify  

• Grindr  

• Truth Social  

• Downdetector (also powered by Cloudflare)

Users attempting to access these platforms encountered HTTP 500 errors, indicating server-side failures. Even Cloudflare’s own dashboard and API were intermittently inaccessible during the peak of the outage.

Developers and users voiced concerns across X, with many noting the scale of disruption resembled the recent AWS outage in October. The incident underscores the vulnerability of global internet infrastructure, which relies heavily on a few key providers.

Cloudflare said its teams were “all hands on deck” to resolve the issue and confirmed that no workaround was possible during the disruption, as the errors originated deep within its network.

While services have now stabilized, Cloudflare has not yet disclosed the root cause of the traffic spike. Investigations are ongoing.