Global websites down as Cloudflare investigates fresh issues
Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.
Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].
Cloudflare has also reported it has implemented a potential fix to the issue and is monitoring the results.
But the outage has affected a number of websites and platforms, with reports of problems accessing LinkedIn, X, Canva – and even the DownDetector site used to monitor online service issues.
Last month, an outage at Cloudflare made many websites inaccessible for about three hours.
Key events
Cloudflare’s outage shows the need for multi-region architecture to protect global services, argues Professor Feng Li, Associate Dean for Research & Innovation at Bayes Business School.
“The Cloudflare outage is yet another reminder of how dependent major systems are on just a few cloud infrastructures across the world.
“This latest episode, coupled with October’s AWS outage and the disruption that caused, should serve as yet another wake-up call for cloud providers to strengthen regional isolation, ensure critical control planes can fail safely, and maintain communicational transparency with users during such incidents. This last point is critical because confidence in the provider often depends as much on timely, clear updates as on the speed of recovery itself.
“For far too long now, people have used cloud services as a single point of reliability rather than accepting shared responsibility. With such dire consequences globally, multi-region or multi-cloud architecture must be implemented as a rapid failover. Incident response and customer communication plans should assume provider outages are a matter of when and not if.
“Cloudflare will inevitably be the subject of user frustration and business disruption. However, the longer-term erosion of confidence in cloud infrastructure and the broader digital ecosystem is far bigger problem.
“This latest outage continues to beg the question of what happens when a digital infrastructure collapse in one part of the world can have such globally significant consequences? It is a question that regulators, enterprises, and researchers alike need to confront.”
Netflix agrees to buy Warner Bros Discovery’s studios and streaming division
Big news in the world of media: Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery’s TV and film studios and streaming division for $72bn.
The deal, worth $82.7bn once debt is included, means Netflix have beaten Paramount Skydance and Comcast to take control of one of Hollywood’s most prized and oldest assets, a move that will change the established film and TV landscape.
Announcing the deal, the two companies say:
This acquisition brings together two pioneering entertainment businesses, combining Netflix’s innovation, global reach and best-in-class streaming service with Warner Bros.’ century-long legacy of world-class storytelling.
Beloved franchises, shows and movies such as The Big Bang Theory, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, The Wizard of Oz and the DC Universe will join Netflix’s extensive portfolio including Wednesday, Money Heist, Bridgerton, Adolescence and Extraction, creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences worldwide.
Here’s our news story on today’s Cloudflare outage:
Canva, the online graphic design tool, says its services have “fully recovered following the Cloudflare outage”.
All systems are now operational, Canva reports, after being taken down by the Cloudflare outage.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, has summed up the problem:
“If a major provider like Cloudflare goes down for any reason, thousands of websites instantly become unreachable.
“The problems often lie with the fact we are using an old network to direct internet users around the world to websites but it simply highlights there is one huge single point of failure in this legacy design.”
The Metro newspaper reports that shopping sites wer affected by the Cloudflare IT problems too – such as Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, and H&M.
H&M’s website is slow to load right now, but the other three seem to be working…
Today’s Cloudflare outage is likely to intensify concerns that internet users are relying on too few technology providers.
Tim Wright, technology partner at Fladgate, explains:
“Cloudflare’s latest outage is another reminder that much of the internet runs through just a few hands. Businesses betting on “always-on” cloud resilience are discovering its single points of failure. Repeated disruptions will draw tougher scrutiny from regulators given DORA, NIS2, and the UK’s emerging operational resilience regimes.
Dependence on a small set of intermediaries may be efficient but poses a structural risk the digital economy cannot ignore. We can expect regulators to probe the concentration of critical functions in the cloud and edge layers — while businesses rethink whether convenience has quietly outpaced control.”
Cloudflare: this was not an attack
Cloudflare’s System Status page shows that the problem that knocked many websites offline has been resolved.
Cloudflare insists the problem was not a cyber attack; instead, it appears to have been caused by a deliberate change made by its firewall handles data requests, to fix a security vulnerability.
Cloudflare says:
This incident has been resolved.
A change made to how Cloudflare’s Web Application Firewall parses requests caused Cloudflare’s network to be unavailable for several minutes this morning. This was not an attack; the change was deployed by our team to help mitigate the industry-wide vulnerability disclosed this week in React Server Components. We will share more information as we have it today.
Edinburgh Airport suspends all flights after IT issue with air traffic control
An IT issue affecting air traffic control has forced Edinburgh Airport to halt all flights today.
Edinburgh Airport said in a statement:
“No flights are currently operating from Edinburgh Airport.
“Teams are working on the issue and will resolve as soon as possible.”
The Airport’s departure page is showing eight flights delayed and five cancelled, but passengers for many other flights are being told to go to the gate.
Reports of problems at Cloudflare peaked at just after 9am UK time:
Online video conferencing service Zoom, and Transport for London’s website (used for travel information in the capital), are among the sites hit by the Cloudflare outage.
