A widespread technical failure at internet giant Cloudflare on Tuesday caused major global disruptions, temporarily rendering thousands of websites – including prominent Luxembourgish platforms – inaccessible.

A major outage at the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare on Tuesday afternoon rendered thousands of websites around the world, including several in Luxembourg, temporarily inaccessible.

The issue began shortly after 12pm and affected a wide range of online services, from global platforms like X, ChatGPT, and League of Legends to Luxembourg-based sites such as Yellow.lu, Paperjam, and Tageblatt. Visitors to these sites encountered error messages for part of the afternoon.

Cloudflare, a US company that provides security and performance services for roughly 20% of global internet traffic, confirmed the problem with its systems. According to an AFP report, the disruption was triggered by an unusual traffic spike on one of its services detected at around 12.20pm.

The company stated that the root cause of the surge is not yet known but confirmed that teams are working to restore full service.