Cloudflare Explained

Cloudflare, Inc.
Industry:Information and communications technology
Brands:1.1.1.1
Type:Public
Num Employees:3,682
Num Employees Year:2023
Revenue Year:2023
Income Year:2023
Net Income Year:2023
Assets Year:2023
Equity Year:2023
Subsid:Area 1 Security
Footnotes:[1]
Module:
Child:yes
Asn:13335

Cloudflare, Inc. is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, wide area network services, Domain Name Service, and ICANN-accredited[2] domain registration services.[3] [4] [5] Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco, California. According to W3Techs, Cloudflare is used by more than 19% of the Internet for its web security services, [6]

History

Cloudflare was founded in July 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn.[7] [8] Prince and Holloway had previously collaborated on Project Honey Pot, a product of Unspam Technologies that served as some inspiration for the basis of Cloudflare.[9] From 2009, the company was venture-capital funded.[10] On August 15, 2019, Cloudflare submitted its S-1 filing for IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker NET.[11] It opened for public trading on September 13, 2019, at $15 per share.[12]

In 2020, Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn was named president, making her one of the few female presidents of a publicly traded technology company in the U.S.[13]

Cloudflare has acquired web-services and security companies, including StopTheHacker (February 2014),[14] CryptoSeal (June 2014),[15] Eager Platform Co. (December 2016),[16] Neumob (November 2017),[17] S2 Systems (January 2020),[18] Linc (December 2020),[19] Zaraz (December 2021),[20] Vectrix (February 2022),[21] Area 1 Security (February 2022),[22] Nefeli Networks (March 2024), and BastionZero (May 2024).[23] Since at least 2017, Cloudflare has been using a wall of lava lamps in their San Francisco headquarters as a source of randomness for encryption keys, alongside double pendulums in its London offices and a geiger counter in its Singapore offices.[24] The lava lamp installation implements the Lavarand method, where a camera transforms the unpredictable shapes of the "lava" blobs into a digital image.[25]

Cloudflare provided paid services to 162,086 customers.[26]

Products

Cloudflare provides network and security products for consumers and businesses, utilizing edge computing, reverse proxies for web traffic, data center interconnects, and a content distribution network to serve content across its network of servers.[27] It supports transport layer protocols TCP, UDP, QUIC, and many application layer protocols such as DNS over HTTPS, SMTP, and HTTP/2 with support for HTTP/2 Server Push.[28] Cloudflare handles an average of 45 million HTTP requests per second.[29]

Artificial intelligence

In 2023, Cloudflare launched Workers AI, a framework allowing for use of Nvidia GPU's within Cloudflare's network.[30]

In 2024, Cloudflare launched a tool that prevents bots from scraping websites. To build automatic bot detector models, the company analyzed AI bots and crawler traffic.[31]

DDoS mitigation

Cloudflare provides free and paid DDoS mitigation services that protect customers from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cloudflare received media attention in June 2011 for providing DDoS mitigation for the website of LulzSec, a black hat hacking group.[32]

In March 2013, The Spamhaus Project was targeted by a DDoS attack that Cloudflare reported exceeded 300gigabits per second (Gbit/s).[33] [34] Patrick Gilmore, of Akamai, stated that at the time it was "the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet". While trying to defend Spamhaus against the DDoS attacks, Cloudflare ended up being attacked as well; Google and other companies eventually came to Spamhaus' defense and helped it to absorb the unprecedented amount of attack traffic.[35]

In 2014, Cloudflare began providing free DDoS mitigation for artists, activists, journalists, and human rights groups under the name "Project Galileo".[36] In 2017, they extended the service to electoral infrastructure and political campaigns under the name "Athenian Project".[37] [38] By 2020, more than 1,000 users and organizations were participating in Project Galileo, including 31 states.[39] [40]

In February 2014, Cloudflare claimed to have mitigated an NTP reflection attack against an unnamed European customer, which they stated peaked at 400 Gbit/s.[41] [42] In November 2014, it reported a 500 Gbit/s DDoS attack in Hong Kong.[43] In July 2021, the company claimed to have absorbed a DDoS attack three times larger than any they'd previously recorded, which their corporate blog implied was over 1.2 Tbit/s in total.[44] In February 2023, Cloudflare reported blocking a 71 million request-per-second DDoS attack which "the company says was the largest HTTP DDoS attack on record".[45]

Edge computing

In 2017, Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Workers, a serverless computing platform for creating new applications, augmenting existing ones, without configuring or maintaining infrastructure. It has expanded to include Workers KV, a low-latency key-value data store; Cron Triggers, for scheduling Cron jobs; and additional tooling for developers to deploy and scale their code across the globe.[46]

In 2020, Cloudflare released a Jamstack platform for developers to deploy websites on Cloudflare's Edge infrastructure, under the name "Pages".[47]

In 2022, Cloudflare announced an Edge SQL database, D1, which is built on SQLite.[48]

In August 2023, Cloudflare and IBM announced a partnership providing bot management capabilities to protect IBM Cloud customers from malicious bots and automated threats.[49]

Also in August 2023, Cloudflare was hired by SpaceX to boost the performance of Starlink.[50]

Internet security

In April 2020, Cloudflare announced it was moving away from using reCAPTCHA in favor of hCaptcha.[51] In September 2022, Cloudflare began to test Turnstile – an alternative to CAPTCHA. The product, instead of presenting a visual CAPTCHA for the user to solve, automatizes the verification process by conducting JavaScript-based checks inside the browser to determine whether the user is a real person or an automated entity. The algorithm reportedly uses machine learning to optimize the process.[52]

Through a contract with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Cloudflare provides registry and authoritative DNS services to the .gov top-level domain.[53]

In November 2020, Cloudflare announced Cloudflare for Teams, consisting of a DNS resolver and web gateway called "Gateway", and a zero-trust authentication service called "Access".[54]

Cloudflare announced a partnership with PhonePe in January 2023 to secure its mobile payment system.[55] In February, Cloudflare launched Wildebeest to allow Mastodon users to set up and run their own instances on Cloudflare's infrastructure.[56]

In August 2023, Cloudflare started the Project Cybersafe Schools program as part of a $20 million grant program from Amazon Web Services, making 70 percent of public school districts in the United States eligible for no-cost cybersecurity services.[57]

In March 2024, they announced Firewall for AI to defend applications running large language models (LLMs).[58]

SASE

Cloudflare One, the company's overarching SASE platform, debuted in October 2020.[59]

Cloudflare One announced the acquisition of Area 1 Security in February 2022, a company who developed a product for combating phishing email attacks.[60]

Cloudflare One announced the acquisition of Nefeli Networks in March 2024, a cloud networking company co-founded by computer scientist Sylvia Ratnasamy.

VPN

In 2019, Cloudflare released a VPN service called WARP,[61] [62] and open sourced the custom underlying WireGuard implementation written in Rust.[63] [64]

Other services

In January 2021, the company began providing its "Waiting Room" digital queue product for free for COVID-19 vaccination scheduling under the title "Project Fair Shot".[65] Project Fair Shot later won a Webby People's Choice Award in 2022 for Event Management under the Apps & Software category.[66]

In March 2023, Cloudflare announced post-quantum cryptography will be made freely and forever available to cloud services, applications and Internet connections.[67]

Security and privacy issues

Intrusions

On June 1, 2012, the hacker group UGNazi compromised some of Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince's accounts and redirected visitors of the website 4chan to a Twitter account belonging to UGNazi. They allegedly used social engineering to trick AT&T support staff into giving them access to Prince's voicemail, then exploited a vulnerability in Cloudflare's use of Google's two-factor authentication system. Once in control of Prince's email account, UGNazi was able to redirect the 4chan domain through Cloudflare's database.[68] [69]

2016-2017 Data Leak

See also: Cloudbleed. From September 2016 until February 2017, a major Cloudflare bug - nicknamed Cloudbleed[70] - leaked sensitive data, including passwords and authentication tokens, from customer websites by sending extra data in response to web requests.[71]

Controversies

Cloudflare has said that it has a content neutrality policy and that it opposes the policing of its customers on free speech grounds, except in cases where the customers break the law.[72] [73] The company has faced criticism for not banning hate speech websites and websites allegedly connected to terrorism groups,[74] but Cloudflare has maintained that no law enforcement agency has asked the company to discontinue these services and it closely monitors its obligations under U.S. laws.[75]

In 2022, a research paper by Stanford University found that Cloudflare was a prominent CDN provider among several other providers that are disproportionately responsible for serving misinformation websites.[76] [77] Cloudflare has come under pressure on multiple occasions due to its services being utilized to access far-right content.[78]

Service terminations

The Daily Stormer

Cloudflare provided DNS routing and DDoS protection for the white supremacist and neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. In 2017 Cloudflare stopped providing its services to The Daily Stormer after an announcement on the website asserted that the "upper echelons" of Cloudflare were "secretly supporters of their ideology".[79]

Previously, Cloudflare had refused to take any action regarding The Daily Stormer. Founder Matthew Prince said he found the website's content "vile", but regretted he alone could "decide its fate".[80] He told Business Insider: "The ability of somebody to single-handedly choose to knock content offline doesn’t align with core ideas of due process or justice. Whether that’s a national government launching attacks or an individual launching attacks."[80]

As a self-described "free speech absolutist", Prince, in a blog post, vowed never to succumb to external pressure again and sought to create a "political umbrella" for the future. Prince further addressed the dangers of large companies deciding what is allowed to stay online, a concern that is shared by a number of civil liberties groups and privacy experts.[81] [82] [83] The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a US digital rights group, said that services such as Cloudflare "should not be adjudicating what speech is acceptable", adding that "when illegal activity, like inciting violence or defamation, occurs, the proper channel to deal with it is the legal system".

Mass shootings and 8chan

In 2019, Cloudflare was criticized for providing services to the far-right discussion and imageboard 8chan. The message board has been linked to mass shootings in the United States and the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand.[84] In addition, a number of news organizations including The Washington Post and The Daily Dot have reported on the existence of child pornography and child sexual abuse discussion boards.[85] [86] [87]

A Cloudflare representative said that the platform "does not host the referenced websites, cannot block websites, and is not in the business of hiding companies that host illegal content".[88] Cloudflare did not terminate service to 8chan until public and legal pressure mounted in the wake of the 2019 El Paso shooting, in which the associated manifesto was published to 8chan.[89] [90] In an interview with The Guardian immediately after the shooting, CEO Matthew Prince defended Cloudflare's support of 8chan, saying that he had a "moral obligation" to keep 8chan online.[91]

On August 5, 2019, Cloudflare terminated service to 8chan.[92] Following this, 8chan moved its forums from the clearnet to the dark web.[93] Cloudflare explained that 8chan "have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit."[94] Prince said that what happened in El Paso was "abhorrent in every possible way", removing 8chan from the Internet was "the right thing to do".[95]

Kiwi Farms

Cloudflare provided DDoS mitigation and acted as a reverse proxy for Kiwi Farms, a far-right[96] [97] Internet forum dedicated to discussion and trolling of online figures or communities. The site often engages in harassment and doxxing of targets[98] and has been implicated in the suicides of at least three people.[99] [100] [101] [102] Kiwi Farms also has a reputation for transphobic content, and its users have been accused of swatting vulnerable individuals.[103] [104] [105] [106] Although Cloudflare was not the primary website host, they did perform critical services to keep Kiwi Farms on-line, both protecting the site from denial-of-service attacks and optimizing content delivery.[107] [108] [109]

In 2022, a campaign was launched by transgender activist Clara Sorrenti, who has previously been targeted by the forum, to pressure Cloudflare into terminating service for Kiwi Farms.[110] [111] Cloudflare responded by issuing a statement on its abuse policies and saying it didn't want to set precedent for speech on the internet with its "extraordinary" decision.[112]

The company also released a blog post[113] and likened their services to that of a public utility, stating that "Just as the telephone company doesn't terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded ... that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy", but that it would certainly be the "popular choice" to drop sites that the Cloudflare team "personally feels [are] disgusting and immoral".[114] [115] The company also defended their decision by saying that "where they had provided DDoS protection services to an anti-LGBTIQ+ website, they donated 100% of the fees earned to an organisation fighting for LGBTIQ+ rights".[116] The blog post mentioned Cloudflare's terms of use agreement, which allows them to terminate service due to "content that discloses sensitive personal information, [and] incites or exploits violence against people" but, according to The Guardian, the statement "did not specifically address how Kiwi Farms users doxxing people did not fall foul of these terms".

On September 3, 2022, Cloudflare blocked Kiwi Farms, citing urgent escalating rhetoric against targets of Kiwi Farms, stating that there is an "unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life". According to The Washington Post, there was a "surge in credible violent threats stemming from the site" and CEO Matthew Prince said that Cloudflare believes "there is an imminent danger, and the pace at which law enforcement is able to respond to those threats we don't think is fast enough to keep up".[117] [118] [119]

Switter

Switter was a social media network for the sex worker community, built by Australia-based company Assembly Four on Mastodon's open-source software, before Cloudflare dropped Switter as a client and ceased services in April 2018, citing terms of service violations.[120] [121] This occurred shortly after the passage of FOSTA/SESTA, a set of bills criminalizing websites that "facilitate or support sex trafficking" in 2018. SESTA weakened protections for Internet infrastructure companies and was criticized on free speech grounds due to concerns about disproportionate impact and disruptions to the lives of sex workers.[122] [123] [124]

Cloudflare said the move was "related to our attempts to understand FOSTA, which is a very bad law and [sets] a very dangerous precedent".[125] Assembly Four said that "Given Cloudflare's previous stances of privacy and freedom, as well as fighting alongside the EFF, we had hoped they would take a stand against FOSTA/SESTA".

Terrorism

In 2015, testimony to the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, it was reported that two of the top three online chat forums and nearly forty other web sites belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were guarded by Cloudflare.[126]

In 2018, The Huffington Post documented that Cloudflare provided services for "at least 7 terrorist groups", as designated by the United States Department of State including Al-Shabaab, the Taliban, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and Hamas. At the time, Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, told The Huffington Post that he couldn't comment on specific cases in which Cloudflare was told about possible terrorist organizations using its services, but that Cloudflare does work with government agencies to be in compliance with its legal obligations.

In September 2019, Cloudflare reported in their Form S-1 filing that their technology was "used by, or for the benefit of, certain individuals or entities" that were blacklisted due to United States economic and trade sanctions regulations",[127] including "entities identified in OFAC’s counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics trafficking sanctions programs, or affiliated with governments currently subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions".[128]

Crime

Cloudflare has been cited in reports by The Spamhaus Project, an international spam tracking organization, for the high numbers of cybercriminal botnet operations hosted by Cloudflare.[129] [130] [131] An October 2015 report found that Cloudflare provisioned 40% of the SSL certificates used by typosquatting phishing sites, which use deceptive domain names resembling those of banks and payment processors to compromise Internet users' banking and other transactions.[132] Cloudflare has been criticized for having a conflict of interest by providing DDoS protection to both the operators and victims of "stresser" services.[133] [134]

In 2018, Cloudflare was identified by the European Union's Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List as a "notorious market" which engages in, facilitates, or benefits from counterfeiting and piracy. The report noted that Cloudflare hides and anonymizes the operators of 40% of the world's pirate sites, and 62% of the 500 largest such sites, and "does not follow due diligence when opening accounts for websites to prevent illegal sites from using its services".[135] [136]

In 2020, an Italian court ruled Cloudflare had to block current and future domain names and IP addresses of the pirate IPTV service "IPTV THE BEST" for infringing on Lega Serie A intellectual property.[137] At the time, Cloudflare was already blocking 22 domain names in Italy.[138] German courts have similarly found that "Cloudflare and its anonymization services attract structurally copyright infringing websites."[139]

Response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February 2022, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov[140] and others[141] called on Cloudflare to stop providing its services in the Russian market amidst reports that Russia-linked websites spreading disinformation were using the company's content delivery network services.[142] Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince responded that the company decided to remain providing services to Russian people to counter Russia's attempts to raise a 'digital iron curtain'.[143] [144] Prince shared that "Indiscriminately terminating service would do little to harm the Russian government but would both limit [Russian citizens'] access to information outside the country and make significantly more vulnerable those who have used us to shield themselves as they have criticized the government."[145] The company later said it had minimal sales and commercial activity in Russia and had "terminated any customers we have identified as tied to sanctioned entities".[146]

Cloudflare's project Galileo, launched in 2014, offers NGOs DDoS protection for free. In 2022, they extended free protection to Ukrainian government and telecoms.[147] [148]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 21 February 2023 . Cloudflare, Inc. 2023 Annual Report (Form 10-K) . . 17, 95–96.
  2. Web site: List of Accredited Registrars . 2023-04-25 . www.icann.org.
  3. News: Clifford . Tyler . 6 October 2020 . Cloudflare CEO: Dozens of U.S. states are using Athenian Project for election security . . 25 January 2021.
  4. News: Durant . Richard . 19 May 2020 . Cloudflare: Thinking Big . . 25 January 2021.
  5. Web site: Lardinois . Frederic . 2018-09-27 . Cloudflare launches a low-cost domain registrar . 2023-04-25 . TechCrunch .
  6. Web site: Usage statistics and market share of Cloudflare . 2024-08-06 . w3techs.com.
  7. News: Lagorio-Chafkin . Christine . Why the CEO of a $350 Million Internet Security Company Practices Radical Transparency . . 6 November 2020.
  8. Web site: Cloudflare, in its IPO filing, thanks a third co-founder: Lee Holloway . 2021-05-06 . . August 15, 2019 . en-US .
  9. News: Kleinman . Zoe . 25 September 2016 . The firm that protects both banks and the Eurovision Song contest . . 4 September 2022.
  10. Web site: Kawamoto . Dawn . March 12, 2019 . Cloudflare's $150 million funding round puts its IPO plans in question . March 12, 2019 . San Francisco Business Times.
  11. Web site: Shieber . Jonathan . August 15, 2019 . Cloudflare files for initial public offering . August 22, 2019 . . en-US .
  12. Web site: Loizos . Connie . September 13, 2019 . Cloudflare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn on the company's IPO today, its unique dual class structure, and what's next . September 16, 2019 . . en-US .
  13. Web site: Mehta . Stephanie . December 17, 2020 . Exclusive: Cloudflare promotes Michelle Zatlyn to president, a gain for women in tech . December 20, 2020 . . en-US.
  14. Web site: 2020-01-07 . Fresh off IPO, this high-profile Bay Area cloud company just snapped up a browser isolation company . 2021-05-12 . bizjournals.com.
  15. News: Tung . Liam . CloudFlare acquires VPN service CryptoSeal, shuts it down . . 19 June 2014.
  16. Web site: 2016-12-13 . Cloudflare acquires app platform Eager, will sunset service in Q1 2017 . 2021-05-12 . . en-US.
  17. Web site: Miller . Ron . November 14, 2017 . Neumob acquisition gives Cloudflare missing mobile component – TechCrunch . September 18, 2020 . TechCrunch.
  18. Web site: Miller . Ron . January 7, 2020 . Cloudflare acquires stealthy startup S2 Systems, announces Cloudflare for Teams – TechCrunch . September 17, 2020 . TechCrunch.
  19. Web site: Wiggers . Kyle . December 22, 2020 . Cloudflare acquires Linc to automate web app deployment . December 22, 2020 . VentureBeat.
  20. Web site: 2021-12-08 . Sawers . Paul . Cloudflare acquires Zaraz to speed up websites and solve third-party bloat . VentureBeat.
  21. Web site: 2022-02-11 . Cloudflare Acquires Vectrix to Help Businesses Gain Visibility and Control of Their Applications . 2022-02-11 . ITSecurityWire . en-US.
  22. Web site: Noteworthy tech acquisitions 2022. Computerworld. March 23, 2022. Charlotte Trueman. March 25, 2022.
  23. News: Novinson . Michael . Cloudflare Buys BastionZero to Guard Critical Infrastructure . Data Breach Today . 2024-05-30 . 2024-05-31.
  24. Web site: Schwab . Katharine . 2017-08-18 . The Hardest Working Office Design In America Encrypts Your Data–With Lava Lamps . 2022-04-16 . . en-US.
  25. Web site: 2017-11-06 . LavaRand in Production: The Nitty-Gritty Technical Details . 2022-04-16 . The Cloudflare Blog . en.
  26. Web site: Palumbo . Angela . 2023-02-10 . Cloudflare Sales Guidance Looks Good. But It's Still Contending With a Spending Slowdown. . 2023-10-15 . . https://archive.today/20230211000542/https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/cloudflare-earnings-stock-price-9aefd34a . 2023-02-11 . live . subscription . en.
  27. Web site: Kincaid . Jason . September 27, 2010 . Cloudflare Wants To Be A CDN For The Masses (And Takes Five Minutes To Set Up) . September 26, 2020 . TechCrunch.
  28. News: Osborne . Charlie . April 28, 2016 . Cloudflare figured out how to make the Web one second faster . . May 17, 2016.
  29. Web site: Kerner . Sean Michael . 14 March 2023 . Attackers Target Microsoft Exchange, According to Cloudflare Application Security Report . 30 March 2023 . SDX Central.
  30. Web site: Moss . Sebastian . 29 September 2023 . Cloudflare to deploy Nvidia GPUs at the Edge for generative AI inference - in up to 300 data centers . live . 9 July 2024 . Datacenter Dynamics.
  31. Web site: Wiggers . Kyle . 2024-07-03 . Cloudflare launches a tool to combat AI bots . 2024-07-16 . TechCrunch . en-US.
  32. Web site: Hesseldahl . Arik . June 10, 2011 . Web Security Start-Up Cloudflare Gets Buzz, Courtesy of LulzSec Hackers . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110612090614/http://allthingsd.com/20110610/web-security-start-up-Cloudflare-gets-buzz-courtesy-of-lulzsec-hackers/ . June 12, 2011 . August 15, 2011 . All Things Digital.
  33. News: Storm . Darlene . March 27, 2013 . Biggest DDoS attack in history slows Internet, breaks record at 300 Gbps . . August 22, 2019.
  34. News: Markoff . John . Perlroth . Nicole . March 26, 2013 . Online Dispute Becomes Internet-Snarling Attack . . August 22, 2019.
  35. News: Gayomali . Chris . The biggest cyberattack in Internet history is happening right now . . 9 January 2015.
  36. Newman . Lily Hay . June 12, 2019 . Cloudflare's Five-Year Project to Protect Nonprofits Online . en . . August 5, 2019 . 1059-1028.
  37. News: Melendez . Steven . 11 June 2020 . Amid pandemic and protests, Cloudflare is defending vulnerable websites . . 3 February 2021.
  38. News: Hatmaker . Taylor . 19 July 2018 . Cloudflare Recruits State and Local Governments for Free Election Site Security Programs . . 28 January 2021.
  39. Web site: Melendez . Steven . 2020-06-11 . Amid pandemic and protests, Cloudflare is defending vulnerable websites . 2021-05-12 . . en-US.
  40. Web site: 2022-11-03 . After a series of cyberattacks, states look to secure election results websites . 2023-08-09 . NBC News . en.
  41. News: Musil . Steven . Record-breaking DDoS attack in Europe hits 400 Gbit/s . . 11 February 2014.
  42. News: Gallagher . Sean . February 11, 2014 . Biggest DDoS ever aimed at Cloudflare's content delivery network . . May 17, 2016.
  43. News: Olson . Parmy . November 20, 2014 . The Largest Cyber Attack in History Has Been Hitting Hong Kong Sites . . August 22, 2019.
  44. Web site: Greig . Jonathan . Cloudflare says it stopped the largest DDoS attack ever reported . 2021-11-19 . . en.
  45. Web site: Arghire . Ionut . Record-Breaking 71 Million RPS DDoS Attack Seen by Cloudflare . SecurityWeek . 18 February 2023 . 14 February 2023.
  46. Web site: Cloudflare creates Workers Unbound platform for serverless development . 2021-05-26 . datacenternews.asia . en.
  47. Web site: Dillet . Romain . 17 December 2020 . Cloudflare launches Cloudflare Pages, a platform to deploy and host JAMstack sites . 2021-05-26 . . en-US .
  48. Web site: Cloudflare gets serious about infrastructure services . 2022-05-12 . . May 11, 2022 . en-US .
  49. Web site: Kerner . Sean Michael . IBM and Cloudflare partner to protect user sites against malicious bots . SDX Central . 13 June 2024.
  50. Web site: 2023-08-23 . SpaceX working with Cloudflare to speed up Starlink service- The Information . 2024-05-17 . Yahoo Finance . en-US.
  51. Web site: 2020-01-08 . Cloudflare moves from reCAPTCHA to hCaptcha . 2021-02-11 . Thank You Robot . en-US.
  52. Web site: Shakir . Umar . Turnstile is Cloudflare's latest attempt to rid the web of CAPTCHAs . The Verge . 28 September 2022.
  53. Web site: Kass . D. Howard . 2023-01-17 . Cloudflare Lands $7.2M Project from CISA for Registry, DNS Services . 2023-04-12 . MSSP Alert . en-US.
  54. Web site: 2020-01-08 . Cloudflare for Teams: Protecting corporations without sacrificing performance . 2021-02-11 . Help Net Security . en-US.
  55. Web site: 2023-01-20 . Digital payments leader partners with Cloudflare to accelerate, secure monthly mobile payments . 2023-05-08 . VentureBeat . en-US.
  56. Web site: Porter . Jon . 2023-02-10 . Cloudflare wants to help you set up your own Mastodon-compatible server in 'minutes' . 2023-07-05 . The Verge . en-US.
  57. Web site: K-12 Schools Improve Protection Against Online Attacks, But Are Vulnerable to Ransomware . 2024-06-27 . www.newsnetmedia.com . en.
  58. Web site: Staff . S. C. . 2024-03-05 . Cloudflare’s Firewall for AI . 2024-08-19 . SC Media . en.
  59. Web site: Alspach . Kyle . Cloudflare expanding into zero-trust network security - Protocol . 2023-05-22 . www.protocol.com . en.
  60. Web site: Williams . Joe . Cloudflare to Buy Area 1 Security in Push to Protect Against Phishing Emails . 6 May 2024 . www.bloomberg.com.
  61. Web site: Cloudflare's privacy-focused DNS app adds a free VPN. Khalid. Amrita. April 2, 2019. Engadget. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20190402052051/https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/01/cloudflares-privacy-focused-dns-app-adds-a-free-vpn/. April 2, 2019. April 2, 2019.
  62. Web site: Cloudflare Finally Launches Warp, But It's Not a Mobile VPN. Humphries. Matthew. September 26, 2019. PCMag. en. 2022-11-19.
  63. Web site: BoringTun, a userspace WireGuard implementation in Rust. Krasnov. Vlad. 2018-12-18. Cloudflare Blog. en-US. 2019-03-29. https://web.archive.org/web/20190404164726/https://blog.cloudflare.com/boringtun-userspace-wireguard-rust/. 4 April 2019. live. dmy-all.
  64. Web site: CloudFlare Launches "BoringTun" As Rust-Written WireGuard User-Space Implementation. phoronix.com. 29 March 2019.
  65. News: Etherington . Darrell . 22 January 2021 . Cloudflare introduces free digital waiting rooms for any organizations distributing COVID-19 vaccines . 2021-05-12 . . en-US.
  66. Web site: Cloudflare's Project Fair Shot . . 26 May 2022 . en.
  67. Web site: Post-quantum crypto should be free, so we're including it for free, forever. March 16, 2023.
  68. Web site: Simcoe . Luke . June 14, 2012 . The 4chan breach: How hackers got a password through voicemail . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20140115142529/https://www.macleans.ca/2012/06/14/the-4chan-breach-how-hackers-got-a-password-through-voicemail/ . January 15, 2014 . August 22, 2019 . Maclean's.
  69. Web site: Smith . Ms. . June 3, 2012 . Hacktivists UGNazi attack 4chan, Cloudflare and Wounded Warrior Project . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131112193000/http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/hacktivists-ugnazi-attack-4chan-Cloudflare-and-wounded-warrior-project . November 12, 2013 . August 22, 2019 . Privacy and Security Fanatic . NetworkWorld.
  70. News: Molina . Brett . February 28, 2017 . Cloudfare bug: Yes, you should change your passwords . . March 1, 2017.
  71. Web site: Conger . Kate . February 23, 2017 . Major Cloudflare bug leaked sensitive data from customers' websites . August 22, 2019 . TechCrunch.
  72. News: Hill . Kashmir . 17 August 2014 . The Company Keeping Your Favorite (And Least Favorite) Websites Online . . 15 September 2021.
  73. News: Peterson . Becky . 17 August 2017 . Cloudflare CEO explains his emotional decision to punt The Daily Stormer and subject it to hackers: I woke up 'in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet' . . 15 September 2021.
  74. News: 19 November 2015 . Web services firm CloudFlare accused by Anonymous of helping Isis . . 15 September 2021 . The week before the Paris attacks, Ghost Security counted almost 40 ISIS websites that use Cloudflare's services..
  75. News: 18 November 2015 . CloudFlare CEO blasts Anonymous claims of ISIS terrorist support . . 16 September 2021.
  76. Han . Catherine . Kumar . Deepak . Durumeric . Zakir . On the Infrastructure Providers That Support Misinformation Websites . Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media . May 31, 2022 . 16 . 287–298 . 10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19292 . 237300450 . August 27, 2022. free .
  77. Cloudflare Is One of the Companies That Quietly Powers the Internet. Researchers Say It's a Haven for Misinformation. August 26, 2022. August 27, 2022. Chris. Stokel-Walker. en. Time.
  78. Web site: Lee . Timothy B. . December 4, 2017 . Cloudflare's CEO has a plan to never censor hate speech again . August 5, 2019 . Ars Technica.
  79. Johnson . Steven . January 16, 2018 . Inside Cloudflare's Decision to Let an Extremist Stronghold Burn . . August 5, 2019 . 1059-1028.
  80. Web site: Peterson . Becky . Cloudflare CEO explains his emotional decision to punt The Daily Stormer and subject it to hackers: I woke up 'in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet' . 2023-05-15 . Business Insider . en-US.
  81. Citron . Danielle Keats . November 28, 2017 . What to Do about the Emerging Threat of Censorship Creep on the Internet . . 282 . 3–4 . Cato.org.
  82. Web site: Keller . Daphne . August 15, 2017 . The Daily Stormer, Online Speech, and Internet Registrars . August 6, 2019 . . Stanford Law School.
  83. News: Shaban . Hamza . August 18, 2017 . Banning neo-Nazis online may be slippery slope, tech group warns Silicon Valley . . August 6, 2019.
  84. News: Roose . Kevin . August 4, 2019 . 8chan Is a Megaphone for Gunmen. 'Shut the Site Down,' Says Its Creator. . . August 5, 2019.
  85. Web site: O'Neill . Patrick Howell . November 17, 2014 . 8chan, the central hive of Gamergate, is also an active pedophile network . August 5, 2019 . The Daily Dot.
  86. Web site: Machkovech . Sam . August 17, 2015 . 8chan-hosted content disappears from Google searches: Domain-specific searches contain warning about "suspected child abuse content" . August 5, 2019 . Ars Technica.
  87. News: Dewey . Caitlin . January 13, 2015 . This is what happens when you create an online community without any rules . . August 22, 2019.
  88. News: October 22, 2019 . Cloudflare embroiled in child abuse row . . November 15, 2019.
  89. News: Uebele . Hannah . August 6, 2019 . El Paso: When Freedom Of Speech Turns Violent . . 2021-06-06.
  90. News: Collins . Ben . August 4, 2019 . Investigators 'reasonably confident' Texas suspect left anti-immigrant screed . . August 22, 2019.
  91. News: Wong . Julia Carrie . Julia Carrie Wong . August 3, 2019 . 8chan: the far-right website linked to the rise in hate crimes . . London . August 3, 2019.
  92. Web site: Terminating Service for 8Chan . August 5, 2019 .
  93. Web site: 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service . August 5, 2019 . The Verge.
  94. News: Wong . Julia Carrie . 2019-08-05 . 8chan: the far-right website linked to the rise in hate crimes . en-GB . The Guardian . 2023-04-30 . 0261-3077.
  95. Web site: Kelly . Makena . 2019-08-05 . Cloudflare to revoke 8chan's service, opening the fringe website up for DDoS attacks . 2023-06-16 . The Verge . en-US.
  96. Web site: Inside Keffals' Battle to Bring Down Kiwi Farms . September 7, 2022 .
  97. Web site: TechScape: How Kiwi Farms, the worst place on the web, was shut down . . September 7, 2022 .
  98. Web site: Pless . Margaret . Kiwi Farms, the Web's Biggest Community of Stalkers . Intelligencer . . 31 August 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220831184007/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/kiwi-farms-the-webs-biggest-community-of-stalkers.html . August 31, 2022 . July 19, 2016 . live.
  99. Web site: Baj . Lavender . July 13, 2021 . Kiwi Farms Has 14 Days To Find A New Domain Host After Being Booted Off DreamHost . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20211001/https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/07/kiwi-farms-domain-registrar/ . October 1, 2021 . live . July 13, 2021 . Kotaku Australia . en-AU.
  100. Web site: Wodinsky . Shashona . June 29, 2021 . The Worst Site on the Web Gets DDoS'd After Being Connected to Prominent Developer's Suicide . live . August 31, 2022 . . en-us . June 29, 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210629232418/https://gizmodo.com/the-worst-site-on-the-web-gets-ddosd-after-being-connec-1847196197.
  101. News: Kotaku Staff . June 28, 2021 . The Brilliant SNES Emulator Author Known As Near Has Died . . live . June 28, 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210627225413/https://kotaku.com/the-brilliant-snes-emulator-creator-known-as-near-has-d-1847182851 . June 27, 2021.
  102. Web site: Colombo . Charlotte . August 3, 2021 . Kiwi Farms, the forum that has been linked to 3 suicides, was made to troll Chris Chan years before she was arrested on an incest charge . https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20211001/https://www.insider.com/chris-chan-arrest-what-is-kiwifarms-the-forum-exposed-her-2021-8 . October 1, 2021 . live. August 31, 2022 . . en-US.
  103. Web site: Goforth . Claire . August 22, 2022 . Pressure grows on Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms after latest doxing campaign . August 23, 2022 . . en-US.
  104. Web site: Cole . Samantha . August 23, 2022 . People Are Demanding That Cloudflare Drop Kiwi Farms . August 24, 2022 . . en-US.
  105. Web site: Rosenberg . Scott . Campaign pushes Cloudflare to drop trans hate site . . 25 August 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220825224047/https://www.axios.com/2022/08/25/cloudflare-trans-hate-site-kiwi-farms . August 25, 2022 . August 25, 2022 . live.
  106. Web site: As Twitch Streamer Flees, Pressure Mounts On Cloudflare To Stop Protecting Controversial Kiwi Farms Site. Kotaku. 26 August 2022. 25 August 2022. Bardhan. Ashley.
  107. Web site: What is a reverse proxy? Proxy servers explained . Cloudflare . 2 September 2022 . A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of web servers ... typically implemented to help increase security, performance, and reliability. .
  108. Web site: Czachor . Emily Mae . Cloudflare indicates services will continue for controversial website Kiwi Farms . . 2 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220902034204/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cloudflare-abuse-policy-kiwi-farms-harassment-clara-sorrenti-keffals/ . September 2, 2022 . September 1, 2022 . live.
  109. Web site: Claburn . Thomas . Cloudflare tries to explain why it protects far-right forums that stalk and harass victims . . 2 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220902085145/https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/cloudflare_kiwi_farm/ . September 2, 2022 . August 31, 2022 . ... the company continues to provide security – its reverse proxy service – that helps Kiwi Farms defend against denial of service attacks and keeps the web forum online. . live.
  110. Web site: D'Anastasio . Cecilia . Cloudflare Urged to Cut Ties to Site That Promotes Harassment . . 30 August 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220903105657/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/cloudflare-urged-to-cut-ties-to-site-that-promotes-harassment . September 3, 2022 . August 30, 2022 . bot: unknown .
  111. Web site: Gilbert . David . Inside Keffals' Battle to Bring Down Kiwi Farms . Vice News . 8 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220908020330/https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyagd/keffals-kiwi-farms . September 8, 2022 . September 7, 2022 . live.
  112. Web site: Tenbarge . Kat . Abbruzzese . Jason . Collins . Ben . Internet services company Cloudflare blocks Kiwi Farms citing 'targeted threats' . NBC News . NBC . 24 July 2023 . en . 3 September 2022.
  113. Web site: Cloudflare's abuse policies & approach . The Cloudflare Blog . Cloudflare . 21 February 2023 . CFAUG2022 . en . 31 August 2022.
  114. Web site: Alspach . Kyle . Cloudflare probably won't terminate services for 'despicable' sites . . 31 August 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220831210230/https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/cloudflare-service-termination-kiwi-farms . August 31, 2022 . August 31, 2022 . live.
  115. Web site: D'Anastasio . Cecilia . Cloudflare Hints It Won't Cut Ties to Site Linked to Harassment . . 31 August 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220831205402/https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/cloudflare-hints-it-won-t-cut-ties-to-site-linked-to-harassment-1.1812952 . August 31, 2022 . August 31, 2022 . live.
  116. Web site: Taylor . Josh . Cloudflare defends providing security services to trans trolling website Kiwi Farms . . 2 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220902052308/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/01/cloudflare-defends-providing-security-services-to-trans-trolling-website-kiwi-farms . September 2, 2022 . September 1, 2022 . live.
  117. News: Menn . Joseph . Lorenz . Taylor . Under pressure, security firm Cloudflare drops Kiwi Farms website . The Washington Post . 3 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220903222349/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/03/cloudflare-drops-kiwifarms/ . September 3, 2022 . September 3, 2022 . live.
  118. Web site: Prince . Matthew . Blocking Kiwifarms . Cloudflare . 3 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220903221655/https://blog.cloudflare.com/kiwifarms-blocked/ . September 3, 2022 . September 3, 2022 . live.
  119. Web site: Tenbarge . Kat . Abbruzzese . Jason . Collins . Ben . Internet services company Cloudflare blocks fringe message board Kiwi Farms citing 'targeted threats' . NBC News . 4 September 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220904004316/https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cloudflare-provided-security-services-kiwi-farms-blocks-website-rcna46219 . September 4, 2022 . September 3, 2022 . live.
  120. Web site: Cole . Samantha . April 19, 2018 . Cloudflare: FOSTA Was a 'Very Bad Bill' That's Left the Internet's Infrastructure Hanging . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220902204019/https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kgvga/cloudflare-switter-down-fosta-sesta . September 2, 2022 . 2 September 2022 . Vice News.
  121. Web site: O'Donovan . Caroline . April 16, 2018 . Trump Just Signed A Law That Helped Create A New Twitter For Sex Workers . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220902234411/https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/sex-workers-twitter-switter-mastodon-alternative-social . September 2, 2022 . 2 September 2022 . . BuzzFeed.
  122. News: 19 April 2018 . Cloudflare Just Banned a Social Media Refuge for Thousands of Sex Workers . .
  123. Web site: Romano . Aja . 2 July 2018 . A new law intended to curb sex trafficking threatens the future of the internet as we know it . 1 September 2022 . Vox.
  124. Web site: McSherry . Corynne . York . Jillian C. . The Internet Is Not Facebook: Why Infrastructure Providers Should Stay Out of Content Policing . Electronic Frontier Foundation . 16 August 2023 . en . 13 October 2022.
  125. News: 18 April 2018 . Cloudflare and FOSTA/SESTA . Assembly Four .
  126. Web site: Kohlmann . Evan F. . January 27, 2015 . Charlie Hebdo and the Jihadi Online Network: Assessing the Role of American Commercial Social Media Platforms . August 22, 2019 . United States House of Representatives.
  127. News: Sun . Mengqi . Cloud-Services Company Cloudflare Discloses Potential Sanctions Violations . 4 March 2023 . Wall Street Journal . 10 September 2019.
  128. News: Stone . Jeff . Cloudflare may have provided service to terrorists, drug traffickers in violation of U.S. sanctions . 4 March 2023 . CyberScoop . 11 September 2019.
  129. Web site: Spamhaus Botnet Threat Report Q1-2020, ISPs hosting botnet C&Cs . May 1, 2020 . The Spamhaus Project.
  130. Web site: July 16, 2017 . Cloudflare and Spamhaus . February 28, 2017 . Word to the Wise.
  131. Web site: The Spamhaus Project . September 30, 2019 . The Spamhaus Project.
  132. News: Edgecombe . Graham . October 12, 2015 . Certificate authorities issue SSL certificates to fraudsters . . October 14, 2015.
  133. Web site: Krebs . Brian . Spreading the DDoS Disease and Selling the Cure – Krebs on Security . 11 October 2023 . 20 October 2016.
  134. Web site: Team . SecureWorld News . Is this OK? DDoS Defense Vendor Protected World's Largest DDoS-for-Hire Site . www.secureworld.io . en-us . 3 May 2018 . 11 October 2023.
  135. Web site: 2018-12-07 . Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List . 16 July 2021 . .
  136. Web site: Maxwell . Andy . 2018-12-10 . New EU Piracy Watchlist Targets Key Pirate Sites and Cloudflare . 16 July 2021 . TorrentFreak.
  137. Web site: Pekic . Branislav . 2021-02-17 . Court orders CloudFlare to stop hosting illegal IPTVs . 2023-06-02 . en-GB.
  138. Web site: Van der Sar . Ernesto . 2020-10-14 . Italian Court Orders Cloudflare to Block a Pirate IPTV Service . 16 July 2021 . TorrentFreak.
  139. Web site: Nordemann . Jan Bernd . 2021-07-12 . Duties of DNS resolvers and CDN providers – the CoA Cologne finds Cloudflare accountable . 16 July 2021 . Wolters Kluwer.
  140. News: Timberg . Craig . Zakrzewski . Cat . Menn . Joseph . A new iron curtain is descending across Russia's Internet . 11 May 2022 . . 4 March 2022.
  141. News: Moore . Logan . Vanjani . Karishma . These Companies Haven't Left Russia. Behind Their Decisions to Stay. . 17 May 2022 . . 25 March 2022.
  142. News: Stone . Jeff . Gallagher . Ryan . Cloudflare Rebuffs Ukraine Requests to Stop Working With Russia . 11 May 2022 . . 8 March 2022.
  143. Web site: Brodkin . Jon . 2022-03-08 . Cloudflare refuses to pull out of Russia, says Putin would celebrate shutoff . 2023-07-05 . Ars Technica . en-us.
  144. Web site: Disrupters and Defenders: What the Ukraine War Has Taught Us About the Power of Global Tech Companies . 2023-07-05 . www.institute.global . en-GB.
  145. News: Brodkin . Jon . Cloudflare refuses to pull out of Russia, says Putin would celebrate shutoff . 19 April 2022 . . 8 March 2022.
  146. News: Morrow . Allison . Crypto is dead. Long live crypto: Davos Dispatch . 26 May 2022 . . 26 May 2022.
  147. Web site: CloudFlare Teams Up With 15 NGOs To Protect Citizen Journalists And Activists From DDoS Attacks . 2022-06-26 . . June 12, 2014 . en-US.
  148. Garson . Melanie . Furlong . Pete . May 2022 . Disrupters and Defenders: What the Ukraine War Has Taught Us About the Power of Global Tech Companies . . en.

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