Cloudflare outage hints at nefarious "traffic spike" as service impact spreads — X, McDonalds go down, company issues statement amidst chaos
1 week ago
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In the last few minutes Cloudflare has confirmed it is aware of a major issue affecting its Global Network, which is causing widespread internet outages ranging from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to ChatGPT, and, ironically, Downdetector. A wave of other websites and services are also experiencing outages.
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2025-11-18T15:18:20.808Z
(Image credit: Downdetector)
The Downdetector outage graph is going down! Just 1,660 reported outages right now.
2025-11-18T15:07:26.124Z
Hi Sydney, Australia readers!
Don't worry if you have issues, this is a planned scheduled maintenance and not part of the global outage. Which should hopefully be coming to an end.
In progress - Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress. We will provide updates as necessary. Nov 18, 2025 - 15:01 UTC
Scheduled - We will be performing scheduled maintenance in SYD (Sydney) datacenter on 2025-11-18 between 15:00 and 19:00 UTC.
Traffic might be re-routed from this location, hence there is a possibility of a slight increase in latency during this maintenance window for end-users in the affected region. For PNI / CNI customers connecting with us in this location, please make sure you are expecting this traffic to fail over elsewhere during this maintenance window as network interfaces in this datacentre may become temporarily unavailable.
In incident management, monitoring is when the incident team watches how a fix works in the real world. Ideally, fixes are tested in an environment before they are unleashed to the public. The team will look for issues and ask for reports from a number of sources with which they have close ties.
These issues are not incidents in the traditional sense, rather they are used to tweak the fix, with the hope that they resolve the incident.
2025-11-18T15:00:29.814Z
Another update from Cloudflare
Update - Some customers may be still experiencing issues logging into or using the Cloudflare dashboard. We are working on a fix to resolve this, and continuing to monitor for any further issues. Nov 18, 2025 - 14:57 UTC
2025-11-18T14:54:19.382Z
(Image credit: Downdetector)
Time to check Downdetector's outage graph!
At 14:19 GMT, there were a reported 11,145 Cloudflare issues logged to the site.
Monitoring - A fix has been implemented and we believe the incident is now resolved. We are continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal. Nov 18, 2025 - 14:42 UTC
Could the end of this outage be nigh? Stay tuned!
2025-11-18T14:47:48.658Z
This is a little worrying, but according to TunaTops in the comments for this story, PADS (Personnel Access Data System) a background check site for nuclear plants is also impacted by the Cloudflare outage. This means that visitor access to their respective nuclear plant is currently not available.
PADS is software used in the US commercial nuclear industry to manage access authorization for workers. This includes tracking their fitness for duty and training. Only authorized personnel, who have cleared background checks and completed training have access to nuclear power facilities.
PADS has nothing to do with running the nuclear power station, but it does impact who is working there. But dear reader, there is nothing to worry about.
2025-11-18T14:38:50.611Z
My kid's daycare reverted to the 1990's. While they usually use tablets connected to an app parents can look at to check kids in and out (and also food and diapers), they're doing everything by hand. Godspeed to the two teachers and 10 toddlers.
— Andrew E. Freedman
2025-11-18T14:36:17.202Z
Cloudflare's latest update has restored dashboard services, but outages remain.
Update - We've deployed a change which has restored dashboard services. We are still working to remediate broad application services impact Nov 18, 2025 - 14:34 UTC
Update - We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue. Nov 18, 2025 - 14:22 UTC
2025-11-18T14:26:18.118Z
Not even lunch is safe from Cloudflare's current outage, according to one Reddit user. McDonalds' self-service ordering system has been photographed as being impacted by the dreaded errors which have plagued wide swathes of the internet over the last few hours.
Our colleagues at TechRadar acquired a statement directly from CloudFlare itself, as the service continues to investigate the ongoing downtime. The statement reads:
"We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors. We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors. After that, we will turn our attention to investigating the cause of the unusual spike in traffic. We will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis when it is ready to blog.cloudflare.com."
2025-11-18T14:05:30.213Z
(Image credit: OpenAI)
ChatGPT is also suffering from "intermittent access issues". OpenAI has issued an update on its status page that the incident is "caused by an issue with one of our third-party service providers". No prizes for guessing which provider that might be.
2025-11-18T14:01:52.618Z
The ongoing Cloudflare outage isn't only affecting services, but also websites like The Register, Notebookcheck, and Videocardz, which all display an Error 500 message when attempting to access them. Stay tuned to Tom's Hardware for more updates.
2025-11-18T13:48:49.116Z
The free MMORPG, Runescape has been impacted by the Cloudflare outage with players turning to Reddit to report that they cannot log in nor use the wiki.
2025-11-18T13:45:30.033Z
Another update, but nothing to get excited about, yet!
Update - We are continuing working on restoring service for application services customers. Nov 18, 2025 - 13:35 UTC
2025-11-18T13:43:06.051Z
(Image credit: Windscribe)
Is the Windscribe VPN another victim of the Cloudflare outage? We don't know because the status page is also down. Stewart is not having a good day, he uses it to check our deals.
2025-11-18T13:35:33.086Z
(Image credit: Downdetector)
Lets take another look at Downdectors graph of reported Cloudflare issues.
After a large spike at 11:45AM GMT (4,558 reports) things have calmed a little, with 1,927 reports at 12:45PM. As we know, the sys admins at Cloudflare are working on the issue, so it is now just a matter of time, and a constant of supply of coffee until the teams have things up and running again.
2025-11-18T13:30:55.614Z
According to its status page, ClaudAI is suffering a major outage due to Cloudflare's own outage.
The old adage of "Don't put your eggs all in one basket" is once again being proven by another Internet outage.
(Image credit: Cluade)
2025-11-18T13:23:49.741Z
WARP is back online! Could this indicate that things will soon be working again?
Update - We have made changes that have allowed Cloudflare Access and WARP to recover. Error levels for Access and WARP users have returned to pre-incident rates. We have re-enabled WARP access in London.
We are continuing to work towards restoring other services. Nov 18, 2025 - 13:13 UTC
2025-11-18T13:18:53.065Z
Well, this means that Steward and I can't work on any new graphics this afternoon! Canva, the online design suite is also impacted by Cloudflare.
Identified - The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented. Nov 18, 2025 - 13:09 UTC
Hold on to your hats! Things are going to get a little bumpy while the fix proliferates across the Internet.
2025-11-18T13:10:13.855Z
According to the latest Cloudflare update
"During our attempts to remediate, we have disabled WARP access in London. Users in London trying to access the Internet via WARP will see a failure to connect."
But what is WARP? Faster than light travel for starships?
Sadly not, Cloudflare's WARP is seemingly a tool to secure internet connections by encrypting all traffic from a user's device. It is mainly used as a privacy tool for consumers and corporate customers. Unlike a VPN, warp does not hide your IP address, it merely encrypts your traffic.
It seems that this could be another attempt to launch a DDOS on Cloudflare. If so, who is leading this and why?
2025-11-18T13:01:26.264Z
A mere 16 minutes after the previous update, Cloudflare has updated the page with the same message as before.
Update - We are continuing to investigate this issue. Nov 18, 2025 - 12:53 UTC
Why the same message? Because they are still investigating the issue, and because the incident management team will have to provide timely updates for their service level agreement. In a previous life I was an incident manager, so I can imagine the situation at Cloudflare's office.
2025-11-18T12:53:17.593Z
(Image credit: Printables / Thangs)
(Image credit: Printables / Thangs)
Even 3D printer enthusiasts are feeling the sting of Cloudflare's outage. I visited Printables and Thangs to search for some fish bone models to print (long story) and both have the dreaded HTTP 500 error code.
2025-11-18T12:49:44.513Z
(Image credit: Cloudflare / X)
X is down again and the Cloudflare information page shows that the issue is occurring on its systems. My browser and the X servers are both working, but Cloudflare's infrastructure is not. An error code 500 confirms that it is a Cloudflare server issue.
2025-11-18T12:42:40.382Z
Over on the Cloudflare System Status page we can see that Cloudflare are still investigating the issue (12:37 UTC). Services have started to recover, but there will be higher than normal error rates while the sys admins work on fixing the issue.
The investigation is looking into HTTP 500 errors (errors occurring at the server level) that impact the dashboard and the Cloudflare API.
Could we soon be making the usual "It's not DNS... it was DNS" jokes? Was someone vibe coding the DNS entries? We'll find out when the post mortem happens.
2025-11-18T12:27:45.899Z
(Image credit: Downdetector)
Downdetector, the outage monitoring site saw 11,201 reports of issues at 11:37AM GMT today. At the last data point, there are 6,570 reports. This could mean that the fix is making its way across the Internet, or that people know about the issue, and and no longer reporting it.
2025-11-18T12:12:49.220Z
X affected
X (formerly Twitter) has been experiencing intermittent issues as a result of the outage. The platform is currently available, but availability has been patchy for the last hour or so.
2025-11-18T12:10:40.001Z
Cloudflare says "We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem. More updates to follow shortly."
2025-11-18T12:09:40.968Z
Cloudflare was previously undergoing scheduled maintenance at 10am UTC, according to the company's website. However, the latest update into Cloudflare's System Status states:
Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing.
2025-11-18T12:07:17.474Z
In the last few minutes Cloudflare has confirmed it is aware of a major issue affecting its Global Network, which is causing widespread internet outages ranging from platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to ChatGPT, and, ironically, Downdetector. A wave of other websites and services are also experiencing outages.
1 week ago
27
English (US) ·