A major global outage hit the internet on Tuesday as Cloudflare, one of the world’s largest web infrastructure companies, suffered a severe disruption that brought down thousands of websites and apps worldwide. Popular platforms, including X, experienced widespread loading failures, leaving millions of users unable to access services for several hours.
According to Cloudflare’s official status page, the outage was triggered by an internal server error, causing websites relying on the company’s content delivery and security network to display “500 errors” or fail to connect entirely. The issue quickly spread across regions, impacting everything from social media platforms to business tools and news sites.
Cloudflare confirmed that engineers were actively investigating the root cause and working on restoring normal operations. While some services began to recover gradually, the company warned that users might continue to experience intermittent problems as systems stabilized.
The outage was so extensive that DownDetector, a platform used to track digital service failures, also faced difficulties due to the same infrastructure dependency.
Cybersecurity watchdog NetBlocks independently verified that the disruption was global in scale and not caused by government-imposed restrictions, ruling out the possibility of targeted internet shutdowns.
The incident highlights how deeply integrated Cloudflare’s systems are with global internet operations. As businesses and users await a full resolution, the event serves as a reminder of the vulnerabilities within the world’s interconnected digital ecosystem.
