Paralyzes websites

Network giant causes internet outages worldwide

(Bild: Negro Elkha - stock.adobe.com)

Due to the outage of the US provider Cloudflare, many major websites were unavailable from Tuesday morning - including Platform X, the AI giant ChatGPT and dozens of news sites.

Cloudflare's website explained that the global network was experiencing problems. "We are continuing to investigate this issue," it promised.

The website allestörungen.at showed that there were problems with many websites.(Bild: Screenshot allesstörungen.at)

Problem should be fixed
In the afternoon, Cloudflare gave a cautious all-clear: "We are seeing a recovery in services, but customers may continue to experience above-average error rates as we continue to troubleshoot the issues." The network giant also announced that a "problem" had been identified - without providing further details: "A solution is currently being implemented."

"Error Code 500": Several websites display this error message.(Bild: Screenshot kurier.at)

This "solution" would then also have worked, it was explained a little later: "A correction has been made and we assume that the problem has now been resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure that all services are back to normal."

Platforms such as X and payment service providers such as PayPal were also affected by the temporary blackout. The widespread outage also had an impact on the stock market. Cloudflare shares fell by more than five percent in pre-market US trading, as reported by Wallstreet online. 

What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is one of the largest internet service providers aimed at companies: In addition to server infrastructure, the US provider provides various security services designed to protect websites from cyber attacks. Around 20 percent of all websites worldwide rely on Cloudflare's services.

It was only in October that server problems at cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) caused disruption to numerous online services worldwide. In addition to services from Amazon itself, payment service providers, stock exchange platforms and gaming providers were also affected at the time.