Global internet disruption hits X, Spotify, ChatGPT, other major websites after Cloudflare outage
Users confused by ‘please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com’ message
New Delhi: Millions of users across the world faced widespread internet disruptions on Monday after a technical glitch at Cloudflare one of the internet’s largest content delivery and security providers, caused popular platforms like X (formerly Twitter), ChatGPT, Canva, Spotify, and several gaming services to become partially or fully inaccessible.
The outage began early in the day, with Downdetector recording a sharp rise in complaints around 6 a.m. ET. Cloudflare later confirmed that it was grappling with “widespread 500 errors” and failures across its dashboard and API services.
One of the most common blocks users encountered during the disruption was the message: “Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed.”
According to Cloudflare’s status updates, this error appears when its security challenge system which checks whether incoming traffic is legitimate malfunctions. Even when the websites themselves remain functional, Cloudflare’s challenge pages can block the pathway, preventing users from accessing the content.
As The Times of India reported, this meant that while platforms like X, ChatGPT, and Spotify were technically up, Cloudflare’s malfunctioning verification layer was keeping millions locked out.
In its initial statement, Cloudflare said “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors. Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing. We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem.”
Subsequent updates noted that systems were slowly recovering, though “elevated error rates” were expected to continue until the issue was fully resolved.
Reports poured in from users worldwide saying they were unable to load or refresh pages on major platforms. Searches like “Is X down?”, “Is Twitter down right now?”, and “Is Cloudflare down?” trended across social media.
Among the platforms most affected were:
X (Twitter) – users unable to load timelines or log in
ChatGPT – login failures and high error rates
Canva, Spotify, League of Legends, and other gaming services – intermittent outages
Multiple e-commerce and business websites dependent on Cloudflare DNS and CDN
The outage drew comparisons to major disruptions caused by AWS failures in recent months, highlighting the extent to which global internet traffic leans on Cloudflare’s backbone services.
Questions over internet dependency and infrastructure resilience
Cloudflare manages critical layers of the global web from DNS resolution to DDoS protection for thousands of websites. Monday’s outage once again exposed the fragility of centralized internet infrastructure, where failure at one major node can trigger cascading access issues across the world.
Cloudflare has indicated that systems are gradually stabilizing but full functionality may take time. Users are likely to continue facing intermittent errors until all affected services resume normal operation.
For the moment, the viral question “What does please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed mean?” has a simple answer: it is a Cloudflare security-layer failure, not an issue with the websites themselves, and normal access should return once the company completes repairs.
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Screenwriter Salim Khan on ventilator support and stable, say doctors
Mumbai (PTI): Veteran screenwriter Salim Khan suffered a brain haemorrhage which has been tackled, is on ventilator support as a safeguard and stable, doctors treating him said on Wednesday, a day after he was admitted to the Lilavati Hospital here.
The 90-year-old, one half of the celebrated Salim-Javed duo which scripted films such as "Sholay", "Deewar" and "Don" with Javed Akhtar, is in the ICU and recovery might take some time given his age.
"His blood pressure was high for which we treated him and we had to put him on a ventilator because we wanted to do certain investigations. Now the ventilator was put as a safeguard so that his situation doesn't get worse. So it is not that he is critical," Dr Jalil Parkar told reporters.
"We did the investigations that were required and today we have done a small procedure on him, I will not go into the details. The procedure done is called DSA (digital subtraction angiography). The procedure has been accomplished, he is fine and stable and shifted back to ICU. By tomorrow, we hope to get him off the ventilator. All in all, he is doing quite well," he added.
Asked whether he suffered a brain haemorrhage, the doctor said, "Unko thoda haemorrhage hua tha, which we’ve tackled. No surgery is required.
As concern over Khan's health mounted, his children, including superstar Salman Khan and Arbaaz Khan, daughter Alvira, and sons-in-law Atul Agnihotri and Aayush Sharma, have been seen outside the hospital along with other well-wishers. His long-time partner Akhtar was also seen coming out of the hospital.
Khan, a household name in the 70s and 80s, turned 90 on November 24 last year. It was the day Dharmendra, the star of many of his films, including "Sholay", "Seeta aur Geeta" and "Yaadon Ki Baraat", passed away.
Hailing from an affluent family in Indore, Khan arrived in Mumbai in his 20s with dreams of stardom. He was good looking and confident he would make a mark in the industry as an actor. But that did not happen. And then, after struggling for close to a decade and getting confined to small roles in films, he changed lanes.
He worked as an assistant to Abrar Alvi and soon met Akhtar to form one of Hindi cinema's most formidable writing partnerships. They worked together on two dozen movies with most of them achieving blockbuster status.
Other than "Sholay", "Deewar" and "Don", Khan and Akhtar also penned "Trishul", "Zanjeer", "Seeta Aur Geeta", "Haathi Mere Saathi", "Yaadon Ki Baarat" and "Mr India".
