Cloudflare officially confirmed that around 4:30 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, its global network crashed due to an unexpected number of "threat traffic auto-generate configuration file" entries, causing a failure in the traffic processing system and leading to widespread service outages, including ChatGPT, X, Spotify, Uber, and the U.S. Energy Regulatory Commission.

The peak of the incident saw over 2.1 million reports of anomalies collected by Downdetector. Cloudflare deployed a fix at 6:42 AM and restored core services within about 6 hours; by 10:00 AM New York Time, ChatGPT and X were accessible normally again. The company emphasized that there is currently no evidence linking the incident to a cyberattack or malicious activity, and it will release a detailed technical analysis in a blog post. Affected by the news, Cloudflare's stock fell more than 7% before the market opened, but the drop narrowed as services were restored.