Can someone please explain whether Cloudflare blackmailed Canonical?

Post by charcircuit » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:29 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #52

jwitthuhn wrote: post #15

"Renting attack capacity from [cloudflare]" is inaccurate as I understand things. That group hosts their site behind cloudflare but I have not seen anyone claim that cloudflare's infra is used for the attacks. This whole article seems conflate hosting an informational site run by the attackers and hosting the attack itself.

In The Before Times, there were very few problematic DDOS operations because... they would all DDOS one another offline. Websites, control infrastructure, anything. DDOS protection services were provided by companies like Akamai; call for pricing, big companies only, absolutely no anonymous sign-ups. Cloudflare revolutionised the industry by providing free DDOS protection to anyone, including DDOS-for-hire services.…

Post by tardedmeme » Tue, May 12, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

tensor wrote: post #76

john_strinlai wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already live a world where your service is terminated for illegal activity. Of course we want it, how is this even a question? you are misunderstanding me, but im not sure if you are doing it on purpose. if they receive a lawful order of course they should oblige. and without a lawful order they should not make content-based decisions on what to host. > The mental loops people in these comments are using to supp…

> if they receive a lawful order of course they should oblige. and without a lawful order they should not make content-based decisions on what to host. You are ignorant of the law. You cannot host user content without being required to police it for at a minimum things like child porn. But this is also not a remotely ambiguous case. Any normal service would instantly terminate a client account if the client is blatan…

Post by rationalist » Tue, May 12, 2026, 3:31 AM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #93

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Ubuntu update servers are necessary to serve the update. Taking them down prevents the users from downloading the update. I don't know whether the update servers were affected though.

They were affected, update service was intermittent for a couple days

Post by ozgrakkurt » Tue, May 12, 2026, 4:00 AM UTC

eblume wrote: post #139

edoceo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Their sign-up flow would have to change dramatically. It might even become a process that is internally "expensive". There is likely one or more managers in charge of this decision and they don't want it. Additionally the current universe rewards the current situation (for them)

This is called KYC and is a standard part of operating a financial service. Seems to me like it should be part of internet infrastructure services as well. And, I thought, in some cases already is?

Post by TiredOfLife » Tue, May 12, 2026, 5:23 AM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #104

dogleash wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if they start sticking their fingers into sites and determining whether the site's content is "appropriate" or whatever They already pick and choose. They have not decided to sit outside of it. Any claim about them not getting involved should be read as tacit approval. Because we know they will drop users they sufficiently disapprove of.

They have done this one time and the CEO said he regretted it.