A widespread internet disruption occurred on Wednesday after UK-based internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare suffered a major outage — an incident that knocked several high-profile websites offline. The keyphrase Cloudflare Down quickly began trending as users across Ghana and the world reported service interruptions.
In Ghana, some of the affected platforms included major news portals such as metrotvonline.com, along with several other media and corporate websites that rely on Cloudflare’s global network for performance and security.
Internationally, the outage created widespread inconvenience. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Shopify’s e-commerce services, and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) all experienced disruptions. According to Downdetector — which ironically became inaccessible for some users due to the ongoing issue — the outages were linked to Cloudflare’s infrastructure breakdown.
OpenAI’s status page also confirmed that both ChatGPT and its Sora short-video app were affected by problems tied to a “third-party service provider.”
Cloudflare revealed that its systems detected a “spike in unusual traffic” around 6:20 a.m. ET, which triggered errors across parts of its global network.
“We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic,” a spokesperson stated. “We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors.”
By 8:35 a.m. ET, Cloudflare said it was still working to restore normal service, noting that some customers continued to face challenges.
Cloudflare technology powers security and traffic management for about 20% of all websites globally, including protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
The outage also hit the financial markets, with Cloudflare’s shares dropping more than 5% in premarket trading.
Today’s incident follows a string of recent global tech disruptions. Less than a month ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a day-long outage that crippled multiple services. This was followed by widespread downtime across Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. In July 2024, a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused one of the largest IT outages in modern history, grounding flights, halting banking operations, and forcing hospitals to delay patient procedures.
With Cloudflare Down impacting critical online infrastructure once again, industry experts warn that the growing frequency of global tech outages highlights major vulnerabilities in the world’s digital backbone.
