VVD, D66 websites among those affected by global Cloudflare outage

Many websites around the world have been difficult to reach on Tuesday due to a malfunction at Cloudflare, which works as a type of digital traffic controller protecting websites against cyber attacks. Among the sites affected are X and the paid version X Pro, but also the websites of the VVD, D66, CDA, NH Nieuws, AT5, Omroep Brabant, and organizations like Alzheimer Netherlands, and the Dutch Cancer Society KWF.

Global web monitoring platforms confirmed a surge in reported issues across a wide spectrum of the internet, including major services like Discord, ChatGPT, several high-traffic e-commerce platforms, and global corporate sites that rely on Cloudflare's Content Delivery Network (CDN) services for speed and reliability.

When trying to reach these sites, it does not open, stating that there was an internal server error on Cloudflare’s network. Cloudflare has stated that it is looking into “a problem affecting many users.” The issues began at around the same time that Cloudflare was about to start maintenance work on a data center in the Chilean capital Santiago, but it is currently unclear whether these things are connected.

The outage also leads to a security risk for many companies. Companies rely on Cloudflare for its help in stopping DDoS attacks, which are attacks in which multiple compromised computer systems flood a target server, website, or network resource with an overwhelming volume of internet traffic.

During this outage, websites are temporarily left without their primary digital defense, potentially exposing them to other malicious actors.