A significant portion of the global internet, including popular platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Spotify , and ChatGPT , was affected by a major technical outage on November 18, 2025. The incident originated from the American online service provider, Cloudflare , which handles approximately 20% of global internet traffic.

⚙️ Cause and Resolution

1. Duration of the outage: It started at 10:20 GMT and was resolved at 14:30 GMT.
2. Acknowledgment: Dane Knecht, Cloudflare's chief technology officer, acknowledged on X that "a problem on the Cloudflare network affected a large portion of the traffic that depends on us."
3. Technical Origin: The company clarified that the outage was not a cyberattack . It was caused by an automatically generated security configuration file that exceeded its size limits , resulting in a software system crash.
4. Impact: The Downdetector website has recorded disruptions to many services, including the video game League of Legends and services from Google and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT).

💡 The Challenge of Centralization

This incident, along with other recent outages at giants like Microsoft and Amazon (AWS), highlights the dependence of a large part of online services on a small number of major providers .

Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Surrey, points out: "It's a double-edged sword, because these service providers need to be large to offer the scale and global reach required by major brands. But when they have a problem, the impact is considerable ."

Cloudflare apologized and indicated that the affected sites should return to normal operation within hours of the resolution.