What went wrong with Cloudflare? Is it fixed now?

Cloudflare, a leader in internet infrastructure, recently experienced a significant outage attributed to what it described as an 'internal service degradation.' The incident, which occurred on Tuesday, November 18, impacted numerous prominent websites, including X, Spotify, PayPal, and Canva, leaving users frustrated. In an update posted on its system status page, Cloudflare acknowledged the disruption, stating, "Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service and will provide updates as we make progress." The company identified the issue as a "global network outage" that resulted in widespread failures affecting both API and dashboard functionalities. Cloudflare's Chief Technical Officer, Dane Knecht, explained that a latent bug in a service related to their bot mitigation system began crashing following a routine configuration change. This malfunction led to a cascading effect, degrading the performance of their network and other services. Knecht emphasized that this incident was not the result of a cyber attack. The severity of the outage was reflected in a sharp increase in complaints on Downdetector, which itself struggled to function due to the Cloudflare issues. In response to a user inquiry on X, Knecht confirmed that the problem has been resolved, stating, "It is resolved." Knecht further expressed regret for the disruption, acknowledging, "Earlier today we failed our customers and the broader Internet when a problem in the Cloudflare network impacted large amounts of traffic that rely on us. The sites, businesses, and organizations that depend on Cloudflare expect us to be available, and I apologize for the impact we caused." He also assured users of the company's commitment to transparency, promising a detailed breakdown of the incident would be shared soon. "We are already working to ensure this does not happen again, but I understand it caused real issues today. The trust our customers place in us is invaluable, and we will do what it takes to regain that trust," Knecht concluded.