The Big File That Broke the Internet: How a Tiny Error Caused a Global Web Blackout

For about two hours on Tuesday, the internet felt broken. Major websites across South Africa and the worldfrom news sites to streaming services and even Twitter/Xeither failed to load or became unusable. The culprit wasn’t a sophisticated cyberattack, but something far more mundane: a single file that grew too large for its own good.

In a detailed post-mortem, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince revealed that the global outage that crippled his company’s network was triggered by a simple database permission change. This technical misstep had a domino effect that ultimately brought down services millions rely on.

The Domino Effect of a Doubled File

Here’s what happened in simple terms. Cloudflare uses a “feature file” to power its Bot Management systema smart tool that helps websites tell human visitors apart from malicious automated bots. This file is constantly updated and sent to every machine in Cloudflare’s global network.

A routine change to a database permission caused that system to go haywire. Instead of outputting clean data, it started dumping multiple entries into the feature file, causing it to double in size.

The software running on Cloudflare’s servers had a built-in size limit for this file, a safety measure that suddenly became a trap. When the bloated file arrived, the software didn’t know how to handle it and simply crashed. Like a key that no longer fits in its lock, the oversized file brought a critical part of the internet’s infrastructure to a standstill.

Why It Took So Long to Fix

Complicating the response was a case of mistaken identity. Initially, Cloudflare’s team suspected a massive cyberattack. A powerful botnet called Aisuru had recently targeted other tech giants, and the coincidental failure of Cloudflare’s own status page (hosted externally) seemed to fit the pattern of a coordinated assault.

This initial misdiagnosis meant precious time was spent preparing for a battle that wasn’t happening. Once engineers identified the true culpritthe oversized filethe solution was straightforward. They stopped the propagation of the faulty file and rolled the network back to a stable, earlier version.

A Lesson in Fragile Complexity

The incident is a stark reminder of the internet’s interconnected fragility. A single, seemingly minor configuration error in one company’s system can ripple outward, turning off the lights for countless unrelated services.

For two hours, the digital world ran into a wall not because of a villainous hacker, but because of a file that got a little too big for its britches. It’s a humbling lesson that in our complex digital ecosystem, even the smallest cog can bring the entire machine to a halt.

{Source: Mybroadband}

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