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Cloudflare Outage: AI Glitch Silenced the Internet
19 Nov
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 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.
