A significant outage at web infrastructure giant Cloudflare caused widespread disruption on Friday morning, leaving major websites including LinkedIn, Zoom, and design platform Canva displaying empty pages for users.
Dashboard Failure Triggers Widespread Disruption
The incident began around 9am on Friday, 5th December 2025. Cloudflare initially announced it was investigating issues with its Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs after receiving reports of a large number of websites serving blank content. The company, which provides critical network and security services for roughly a fifth of all websites, quickly became the focal point of a global internet disruption.
Shortly after its initial statement, Cloudflare reported it had implemented a fix and was monitoring the results. However, the recovery was not instantaneous, and numerous high-profile sites remained inaccessible or displayed empty pages throughout the morning. The problem was so extensive that it even knocked out DownDetector, the popular service used to track online outages. When DownDetector came back online, it had recorded more than 4,500 user reports specifically related to Cloudflare's issues.
A Recurring Problem for Critical Infrastructure
This is not an isolated incident for the infrastructure provider. In November, a similar Cloudflare problem affected services including X (formerly Twitter), Spotify, ChatGPT, Facebook, Amazon Web Services (AWS), bet365, Canva, BrightHR, and the popular game League of Legends. On that occasion, over 10,000 people reported issues, and Cloudflare cited an "internal service degradation."
These events follow a pattern of major outages originating from core internet providers. In October, a separate issue originating from AWS affected thousands of sites. Furthermore, the catastrophic global computer crash in 2024, triggered by a faulty CrowdStrike security update, knocked Sky News off air and caused severe backlogs for GP services, demonstrating the fragility of interconnected digital systems.
Experts Warn of Inherent Network Vulnerabilities
Cybersecurity experts were quick to highlight the systemic risk exposed by the outage. Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Adviser at ESET, commented on the event, stating, "If a major provider like Cloudflare goes down for any reason, thousands of websites instantly become unreachable."
He pointed to a fundamental flaw in the internet's architecture, explaining, "The problems often lie with the fact we are using an old network to direct internet users around the world to websites, but it simply highlights there is one huge single point of failure in this legacy design." This statement underscores a growing concern about the concentration of critical web traffic through a handful of major providers, creating potential vulnerabilities that can have instantaneous, worldwide consequences.
The Friday outage serves as a stark reminder of the internet's reliance on a few key players. While services were eventually restored, the event disrupted work, communication, and business operations for millions, prompting renewed discussion about the resilience and decentralisation of the world's most essential communication network.
