Internet services worldwide hit by glitches, Cloudflare blames Google’s Cloud Platform

An issue with Cloudflare - a giant content delivery network - has affected internet services globally. Image / Getty Creative

A technical foul-up with Cloudflare - a giant content delivery network (CDN) that, ironically, is supposed to help with security and reliability - affected internet services around the world including YouTube, Snapchat, Twitch, Shopify, PlayStation and Xbox’s gaming networks and Spotify this morning NZT.

Cloudflare blamed its issues on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

“This was a Google Cloud outage. A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. All Cloudflare services have since been restored and are now fully operational,” she told the Herald.

A Google spokeswoman said the company had been aware of “disruption to a number of Google Cloud services”. All of the issues had been resolved.

Spotify users were met with the message: “Audiences in Jwt are not allowed.”

The Herald’s website was affected, with only the first two paragraphs of paywalled stories displaying. The issue is now resolved.

Some US tech sites are calling the issue an “internet meltdown” but many of the issues seem centred on the US midwest.

At 7.12am NZT, Cloudflare posted a services update saying: “We are starting to see services recover. We still expect to see intermittent errors across the impacted services as systems handle retried and caches are filled.”

A few minutes later, the firm posted an explanation, of sorts:

“Cloudflare’s critical Workers KV service [which provides access to 200 Cloudflare data centres] went offline due to an outage of a 3rd party service that is a key dependency. As a result, certain Cloudflare products that rely on KV service to store and disseminate information are unavailable.”

A Google Cloud service update posted earlier this morning read: “Multiple GCP [Google Cloud Platform] products are experiencing impact due to Identity and Access Management Service Issue.”

‘Deep impact’

“Cloudflare engineers are working to restore services immediately. We are aware of the deep impact this outage has caused and are working with all hands on deck to restore all services as quickly as possible,” Cloudflare said in its latest update.

The Silicon Valley-based Cloudflare helps manage traffic for apps and services that account for close to 20% of the world’s web traffic, according to the company’s website.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.