Directories randomly changed to files

CFengine 3.15.0 randomly changes directories to files.

This has been an intermittent but persistent problem going back to CFengine 3.5.3 and was originally reported in CF-1500. 

In the latest incident both the /etc/init and /etc/security directories were made into flat files.

The problem apparently begins as some type of network issue encountered by cf-agent during communication with the server.  No other clients experience any such issue at the time.

cf-agent output is attached.