Cloudflare confirmed via its official status page that its global network had encountered serious technical problems affecting “many customers.” The disruption began at approximately 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time (6:00 p.m. in Vietnam) and rapidly spread across regions.

In Vietnam, several major websites became inaccessible, including Cong Thuong, Thoi Bao Ngan Hang, Thuong Truong Magazine, Petrotimes, the Tinh Te social network, and the Thu Vien Phap Luat legal website. Leading news platforms and forums remained offline for several hours, leaving millions of users without access to news, services, and community spaces.

Even globally renowned outage tracker Downdetector became unreachable - ironically during one of the internet’s most significant failures in recent memory.

Among the international services impacted were OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Canva, Spotify, PayPal, Uber Eats, Archive of Our Own (AO3), and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Popular online games like League of Legends and Valorant also reported service disruptions.

A recurring error message displayed across various platforms read: “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed,” suggesting that the fault lay in Cloudflare’s core security and content delivery layers.

Though the root cause had not been officially confirmed, the outage coincided with a scheduled “maintenance window” at Cloudflare’s Santiago data center, according to Windows Central.

The issue raised alarms about the fragility of modern digital infrastructure. With Cloudflare handling over 78 million HTTP requests per second and serving as the backbone for countless websites, even a brief malfunction can ripple into a global communications and commerce crisis.

In Vietnam, authorities and technology stakeholders were quick to respond.

Nguyen Truong Giang, Acting Director of the Vietnam Internet Center, told VietNamNet that while the exact cause remained unknown, the incident had clearly affected multiple Vietnamese websites. The center is continuing to monitor the aftermath.

A source familiar with Cloudflare’s operations in Vietnam confirmed that the company had established several Points of Presence (POPs) in the country to comply with local data regulations. These POPs are responsible for storing and processing data before it is transferred abroad.

Commenting on the matter, Le Quang Hieu, Deputy General Director of Viettel Network Corporation, noted that any Vietnamese organizations using Cloudflare services were affected during the disruption. However, platforms hosted on Viettel’s domestic infrastructure remained fully operational, as Viettel provides a similar web protection service.

By approximately 9:44 p.m. (Vietnam time), many affected websites had resumed normal operations. Cloudflare reported that the issue had been resolved and that its engineers were monitoring systems to ensure continued stability.

This is not the first time Cloudflare has triggered a global disruption. A similar event in June this year crippled platforms like Twitch, Etsy, Discord, and Google, emphasizing once more how vulnerable the world remains to single points of failure within its digital ecosystem.

Beyond frustrating end users, such breakdowns pose serious risks to e-commerce, media operations, and critical online services. They raise urgent questions about digital sovereignty, resilience, and the need for diversified infrastructure solutions in an increasingly interconnected world.

Hai Phong & Thai Khang