Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

Right. It's more abstract than that. They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable. Then they sell the same "protection" to the victims. It's the classic mafia protection scam.

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#5

Post by amatecha » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #3

They didn’t.

Yeah, probably not - because they don't explicitly have to, as outlined in the post. The very architecture of CF's services essentially enables "blackmail as a service" in the sense that, CF protects the attacker and essentially creates a coercive environment in which the victim "has" to pay CF to protect them from... the very attacker that CF protects.

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#6

Post by jpereira » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

This is insanely dumb. Cloudflare is providing free hosting services, not materially supporting the attacker. You can argue that cloudflare needs to be better, or adopt different values towards, taking down sites they host, but this organization could absolutely just serve elsewhere (or just advertise their services over telegram or the like).

Maybe there is a point to be made about monopoly power in hosting and ddos protection. I don't really see how this blog post, or labelling it blackmail, help make that point.

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#7

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #4

deadbabe wrote: post #3

They didn’t.

Right. It's more abstract than that. They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable. Then they sell the same "protection" to the victims. It's the classic mafia protection scam.

[deleted]

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#8

Post by gruez » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #4

deadbabe wrote: post #3

They didn’t.

Right. It's more abstract than that. They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable. Then they sell the same "protection" to the victims. It's the classic mafia protection scam.

>They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable

Victims can't file a subpoena to get account details?

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#9

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

jpereira wrote: post #6

This is insanely dumb. Cloudflare is providing free hosting services, not materially supporting the attacker. You can argue that cloudflare needs to be better, or adopt different values towards, taking down sites they host, but this organization could absolutely just serve elsewhere (or just advertise their services over telegram or the like). Maybe there is a point to be made about monopoly power in hosting and ddos…

[deleted]

Re: Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

#10

Post by superkuh » Mon, May 11, 2026, 6:54 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #8

superkuh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It's more abstract than that. They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable. Then they sell the same "protection" to the victims. It's the classic mafia protection scam.

>They protect (from legal consequence or even discovery) the attackers and host them on their infrastructure so they're untouchable Victims can't file a subpoena to get account details?

I've never tried a subpoena. I've tried reporting them to ICANN for whois abuse contact violations and never received a response (after I recieved a response from cloudflare saying, "Go away, we don't care, sign up for our services and pay us to care."). Perhaps I should set up a gofundme or something for the thousands of dollars needed to get justice via subpoena.

If I were hosting illegal malicious actors doing this stuff on my home servers and refused to even say who was doing it I would 100% get my door kicked down by the FBI. But some persons, corporate persons, are more equal than others.