Cloudflare has a serious problem, many websites are inaccessible

On the evening of November 18 (Vietnam time), the global network of Cloudflare, one of the world's largest core Internet infrastructure providers, suddenly encountered a serious problem, causing widespread access disruptions to millions of websites and online services worldwide.

The problem began to be recorded at around 11:48 UTC (18:48 Vietnam time). Immediately, a series of users reported being unable to access major websites using Cloudflare's services.

On the official Cloudflare Status page, Cloudflare was quick to acknowledge it. The announcement stated: "We are aware of and investigating an issue affecting multiple customers, including widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API issues."

An HTTP 500 error is a generic error code that indicates that the server encountered an unexpected situation that prevented it from completing the request, in this case due to an issue on Cloudflare's part.

"We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this issue. Further updates will be announced soon," Cloudflare's homepage said.

Notably, in parallel with the 500 error spreading across the network, Cloudflare also confirmed the problem in its customer support system. At about 18:17 on the same day (Vietnam time), the company issued an announcement:

"Our support portal provider is currently experiencing issues, so customers may experience errors viewing or responding to support requests. Responses to customer requests are not impacted, and customers can still contact us via live chat (Business and Enterprise) through the Cloudflare Dashboard or via the emergency phone line (Business). We are working with our third-party provider to understand the full impact and mitigate this issue."

While the announcement doesn't directly point to the cause of the primary network outage, it does raise the possibility that a critical third-party provider in the Cloudflare system is experiencing issues that could be the source, or at least a contributing factor, of the widespread disruption.

Downdetector, a real-time incident monitoring system, also recorded a spike in Cloudflare access problem reports, of which 68% of users had problems connecting to the server, 24% related to the website.

In Vietnam, many systems that rely on Cloudflare for core services such as CDN, DNS or WAF (Web Application Firewall) are experiencing slow access, page errors or temporary interruptions.

For Vietnamese users and businesses, this incident is a reminder of the risks of relying too much on a single infrastructure provider, especially for business-critical websites and applications. Diversifying providers or setting up emergency backup solutions is more urgent than ever.

As of now, many websites using CloudFlare services are still inaccessible. There is currently no detailed information on the exact cause or time for a complete fix./.

(Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/cloudflare-gap-su-co-nghiem-trong-hang-loat-website-khong-the-truy-cap-post1077762.vnp