Cloudflare has brought its services back online after a short dashboard and firewall outage that rippled through some of the world’s most used apps and websites, including Coinbase, Claude AI, Zoom, LinkedIn, and multiple trading platforms. The company says a software change in how its firewall parses requests caused parts of its network to become unreachable for several minutes, but stresses there was no sign of a cyberattack.
What happened during the outage
The disruption began around 08:47 GMT and lasted roughly 25 to 30 minutes before services stabilised. Monitoring site Downdetector recorded a surge in problem reports running into the thousands before complaints quickly dropped once a fix was rolled out.
Cloudflare explains that engineers deployed a change to the Web Application Firewall, adjusting how it handled incoming requests in response to a newly disclosed vulnerability in React Server Components. That change unintentionally blocked access through parts of the company’s network, leaving dashboards and APIs unavailable and throwing connection errors across dependent services.
Platforms hit around the world
The outage had a visible impact across both consumer and enterprise services. Users reported problems loading or logging into apps such as Zoom, LinkedIn, Shopify, Canva, Substack, and Fortnite, alongside Coinbase and Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot.
Financial platforms were among the hardest hit in some regions. In India, trading apps including Zerodha, Groww, Angel One, and Upstox saw login failures, stalled charts, and delayed orders during active market hours, with some brokers resorting to backup channels such as WhatsApp to support clients.
No attack, but market jitters
Cloudflare and affected platforms emphasise that the incident was triggered by a misconfigured firewall change, not by a malicious intrusion. React’s earlier disclosure of a server-side vulnerability pushed providers to adjust defences quickly, and Cloudflare ties the outage directly to that mitigation work.
Even so, the disruption again shook investor confidence. Cloudflare’s shares slipped in pre‑market trading as the outage followed a larger November incident that had already taken down platforms such as X and ChatGPT, underlining how repeated failures can weigh on the valuation of a core internet utility.
Growing dependence on Cloudflare
This latest glitch highlights how many critical services sit behind the same set of infrastructure providers. A few minutes of downtime at one vendor translated into broken dashboards, error pages, and lost trades from social media to stock markets, raising questions for regulators and customers about operational resilience and vendor concentration.
Industry observers note that even short outages can carry real economic consequences when they strike during peak trading windows or working hours. For AI companies and collaboration platforms, interruptions also undermine user trust at a time when competition among cloud and edge providers is intensifying.
How Cloudflare and clients responded
Cloudflare says teams reverted the problematic firewall change, restored dashboard and API access, and are preparing a full post‑mortem to tighten testing around rules updates. The company is also working to assure customers that traffic inspection changes pushed to address emerging vulnerabilities will be more carefully staged.
Affected platforms communicated status updates throughout the incident. Coinbase and Claude AI confirmed that access had returned to normal, while Indian brokers notified users as services came back online and pointed to the Cloudflare issue as the root cause.
Recent and past outages
The dashboard disruption comes less than a month after a separate November event in which Cloudflare issues prevented access to X, ChatGPT, gaming platforms, and public transit systems in some regions. In that earlier case, all downstream services were restarted after Cloudflare resolved internal software problems, but the incident already prompted calls for better redundancy.
Together, the November and early‑December outages show how quickly configuration changes at the network edge can cascade into global visibility problems. For customers, they serve as a reminder to stress‑test failover strategies and consider multi‑provider setups for mission‑critical workloads.
Key outage facts table
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Time window | Around 08:47 GMT to roughly 09:13–09:20 GMT. |
| Root cause | Faulty Web Application Firewall request parsing change. |
| Not an attack | Cloudflare says no evidence of cyberattack. |
| Major services hit | Coinbase, Claude AI, Zoom, LinkedIn, Shopify, Canva, trading apps. |
| Regions impacted | Global, with heavy impact on Indian trading platforms. |
| Prior outage | Separate major outage on November 18, 2025. |
(Source: timesofindia, reuters, cnbctv18)
