The post Database Error Takes Down 20% of Internet: Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Global Crypto Trading appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

A simple database permission change triggered a massive internet outage on November 18, 2025, knocking offline major cryptocurrency exchanges, social media platforms, and thousands of websites worldwide. The incident exposed how much of the internet depends on just a few infrastructure companies. What Happened During the Outage At 11:20 UTC on November 18, Cloudflare’s network began experiencing widespread failures. The company, which handles about 20% of all internet traffic, suffered a complete breakdown of its core systems for nearly three hours. The problem started with a database change at 11:05 UTC. Cloudflare was improving security on its ClickHouse database system when something went wrong. The database began creating duplicate entries in a configuration file used by Cloudflare’s bot protection system. This file grew from its normal size to more than double, breaking the software that processes internet traffic. When Cloudflare’s servers tried to load this oversized file, they crashed. The file contained more than 200 features, exceeding the system’s built-in limit of 200 (normal usage was around 60 features). The failure spread across the company’s entire global network, affecting millions of websites that rely on Cloudflare for security, speed, and reliability. Source: @Cloudflare Users trying to visit affected websites saw “Error 500” messages instead of normal content. The outage lasted until 14:30 UTC when engineers manually replaced the broken file with a working version. Full service restoration was completed by 17:06 UTC. Crypto Industry Hit Hard by Infrastructure Failure Major cryptocurrency platforms suffered significant disruptions during the outage. Popular exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and BitMEX became inaccessible to users. Blockchain explorers including Etherscan and Arbiscan went offline, preventing traders from checking transaction details. The timing was particularly bad for crypto markets. Bitcoin dropped to $89,300 during the outage, while Ethereum fell below $3,000. The total cryptocurrency market cap dropped 3%…

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Filed under: News - @ November 20, 2025 9:27 am