Why did Cloudflare fail again and how did it affect Canva, Zoom, Fortnite and Spanish banks?

Cloudflare, the US multinational specializing in web infrastructure and cybersecurity, has once again suffered a global outage that has affected the operation of numerous digital platforms and online services around the world. It is the second massive outage in less than two weeks, intensifying concerns about the reliability of the cloud infrastructure.

The company has acknowledged the problem through its official channel: “We are investigating issues with the Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs“. In the same statement they have added: “Customers using the Cloudflare Dashboard / APIs are affected, as requests may fail and/or errors may be displayed“.

Zoom, Fortnite and Canva among the affected services

The impact of the failure was immediate and widespread. Among the first platforms to register incidents were Canva, the design and publishing tool, and Zoom, the popular video calling service. These were quickly joined by online video games such as Valorant, Fortnite, League of Legends and the Epic Games Store, affecting millions of users worldwide.

• What happened to Cloudflare and which pages are now working normally

Problems were also reported in the Spanish banking sector, with interruptions in access to the websites of entities such as CaixaBank and Bankinter, evidencing the breadth of the digital ecosystem that relies on Cloudflare.

According to the Downdetector platform, which monitors incidents in real time, the first reports began to be registered at 8:00 (Spanish peninsular time), although the volume of reports shot up around 10:00.

A key service for the operation of the Internet

Cloudflare is one of the key players in cloud computing, acting as an intermediary between content providers and the websites that access that content. Its service includes a powerful content delivery network (CDN), making it an essential piece of the Internet’s technical scaffolding.

• Movistar outage blocks access to thousands of websites and leaves many users in Spain without connection

Due to this centrality, a failure in its systems has immediate repercussions on thousands of sites and applications that depend on its technology to remain operational. This situation was repeated on November 18, when Cloudflare was down for four hours, also affecting platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Canva and many others.

A vulnerable digital infrastructure

Today’s incident adds to a recent string of failures in cloud computing services. About a month and a half ago there was a crash in the systems of AWS, Amazon’s cloud division, and three weeks later Azure, Microsoft’s cloud, also experienced problems.

• Massive Internet crash: what is known about Cloudflare’s global failure that knocked out X, ChatGPT and dozens of websites

These events highlight the structural vulnerability of the global Internet network, whose stability depends on a limited number of providers. The concentration of essential services in a few technology companies increases the risks of chain collapse when a failure occurs.

No detailed technical explanations

So far, Cloudflare has not offered a technical diagnosis beyond the initial notification. Nor has it clarified whether it was an internal error, a failure to update its systems or some kind of external attack. The lack of information contributes to uncertainty among its millions of customers and indirect users.

The recurrence of the failure in such a short period has raised reactions of concern in the technology and business sphere, especially among companies that depend on the proper functioning of Cloudflare for their digital operations.