The truth is in the middle.
There were repercussions in Denver/Colorado with a Tier 1 network provider, mainly in the form of greatly increased latency. This impacted downstream providers, as well as a couple of my clients in Colorado. I informed those clients yesterday my opinion was the issue was either a network engineering/backhoe issue, or there was a major concerted cyber attack targeting the Denver area.
The reality? There was an attack. It was measurable. It did have a noticeable impact. But it was far more annoying and irritating than the headline "Internet killed. Film at 11." would lead one to believe.
Here is a nice collection for the interested readers: https://www.euro-ix.net/resources-list-of-ixps
If they really know how the Internet works they shouldn't make claims like this.....
They are crafting the stories methodically (and successfully I'd say, given the number of times we all talk about CloudFlare on HN) to drive more exposure to their brand. It's too optimistic and hyperbolic sometimes, but no really different than any product announcement from Apple or Facebook.
In all fairness to them, a positive side effect is that we're all discussing now how to solve the root cause of this decades-old - but still threatening - problem (open networks and dns attacks). I guess it will really take an apocalyptic event to convince millions of operators to configure better their own networks.
This is not the first time CloudFlare uses hyperbolic headlines. Case in point: "Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4747910
They point out, for example, that the IX's in question routinely see 2.0+Tbps peaks, so a 0.3Tbps attack would not be likely to shake a single IX, little like "the internet" itself.
Interesting rebuttal, although certainly not comprehensive.