What caused the recent Cloudflare outage?

The outage was caused by an error in Cloudflare's Bot Management system where a feature file duplicated itself, overwhelming the system.

Did a cyber attack cause the Cloudflare outage?

No, Cloudflare confirmed the outage was a technical failure and not caused by any cyber attack or malicious activity.

How long did the Cloudflare outage last?

Cloudflare's services were largely restored within three hours and fully restored after approximately five hours.

Home / Technology / Cloudflare Outage: AI Glitch Silenced the Internet

Cloudflare Outage: AI Glitch Silenced the Internet

19 Nov

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Summary

An AI error in bot management systems triggered a widespread internet outage.
A duplicated feature file in the bot protection system caused the failure.
CEO Matthew Prince issued a public apology for the significant disruption.

Cloudflare Outage: AI Glitch Silenced the Internet

Cloudflare experienced a significant outage, impacting a majority of internet traffic. The disruption was traced back to an error within its Bot Management system, which utilizes an AI model to score traffic requests. A routine refresh of a critical "feature file" caused it to duplicate, overwhelming the system and resulting in error codes for website access.

CEO Matthew Prince issued a formal apology, describing the event as the company's worst outage in over six years. He clarified that the incident was not a cyber attack but a technical failure originating from a change in how the feature file was generated. The company initially suspected a malicious attack due to the unusual symptoms.

Cloudflare's services began to recover approximately three hours after the issue started, with full restoration achieved after five hours. The company has stated that it is implementing new measures to prevent similar large-scale disruptions, focusing on enhancing system resilience against error propagation.

Disclaimer: This story has been auto-aggregated and auto-summarised by a computer program. This story has not been edited or created by the Feedzop team.