Home / Technology / Cloudflare Blames Database Glitch for Site Outage
Cloudflare Blames Database Glitch for Site Outage
19 Nov, 2025
Summary
- Cloudflare wrongly suspected a DDoS attack caused the outage.
- A change in database systems permissions caused the widespread disruption.
- The error impacted website traffic processing for clients.
Cloudflare has revealed that a significant outage on November 18, which impacted numerous websites, was not the result of a cyberattack as initially suspected. CEO Matthew Prince clarified that a misconfiguration within the company's database systems permissions was the root cause.
This error affected a crucial file used by Cloudflare's Bot Management system, which scores bots for AI training and access control. The malfunction led to widespread HTTP 5xx error codes, disrupting traffic processing for many of Cloudflare's clients.
The company described the incident as its most severe outage since 2019. Prince apologized for the disruption, assuring users that the issue has since been resolved and was not caused by malicious activity.
