Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

rasbora.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 244 posts

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#31

Post by oivey »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15
everyone wrote: post #9

I don't think the author's argument makes sense. Cloudflare's position is that they are neutral and will provide their services to anyone and everyone. They do not make those value judgements deciding who deserves their services or not. The fact that they thus provide their service to booters isn't a flaw in Cloudflare's argument, in fact it's consistent with their position. The author is implying that Cloudflare sho…

Cloudflare is neutral... Unless you are 8chan, Stormfront, or KiwiFarms. It's an odd definition of neutrality that allows one to take decisive values positions.

Cloudflare’s line seems to be where bodily harm comes into play (e.g. Kiwifarms people enabling SWATing via doxxing, stalking by mobs, etc) which is above and beyond just normal criminal activity. The situations really are not very similar.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#32

Post by rtpg »

judge2020 wrote: post #14

> they are actively lighting these fires and making money by putting them out! A bit of an odd take - it's like the fire department putting out the fire at the known arsonist-for-hire's house, and the police chief happens to run the fire department while doing nothing about the suspiciously wealthy arsonist. The difference is that Cloudflare isn't an actual public service and has no obligation to DDOS protect anyone.

A simpler example: AWS hosts fakeLVbags.com. This site sells counterfeit luxury handbags, and says so clearly on the site.

Now AWS does not realize this as they are large and have lots of operations.

However, one day a journalist asks Amazon directly about this website, and there is an official press release by Amazon made about it.

AWS has had this illegal activity brought to their attention, as well as the fact that they are facilitating this activity. They openly acknowledge the site existing.

Legally this is very different from not knowing about what is going on! Not only does Amazon in this hypothetical know, they have admitted publicly that they know!

So… now to Cloudflare. Did Cloudflare, experts in this domain, not know about these DDOS vendors? And did not realize they were offering protection to those? Maybe not! But maybe. And knowing makes things a lot worse for them. Especially if Cloudflare connected the dots internally about the usage for illegal activity. But! CF simply might not have known, or had a complete picture. Or anything in between.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#33

Post by mlyle »

renewiltord wrote: post #27

What a nonsense storm in a teacup.

It's not complete crap: Cloudflare facilitates the operation of "load testing" (DDoS) services by overwhelmingly providing the front end. Cloudflare claims to not care about content and provides security services to all, but perhaps Cloudflare is incentivized to do this by the fact that they make money on the DDoS they facilitate.

Cloudflare isn't a protection racket, but doesn't have completely clean hands, either.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#34

Post by oivey »

This article seems to have been posted to make a false equivalence with the current Kiwifarms situation. There’s a pretty clear difference in urgency between taking down DDOSers and deplatforming a forum that is a gathering point for a mob engaging in mass harassment, stalking, and SWATing. One is a nonviolent crime. The other is a crime targeting an individual that had already escalated to the point of a high risk of violence, with no sign of slowing down.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#35

Post by roenxi »

This article is not very articulate on the point, but goes to the real touchy point with the Kiwifarms decision. Based on what I know it seems Cloudflare made a good decision, but:

1. The internet is vast.

2. Figuring out what someone is doing on the internet even if you did somehow have full transparency over the data they send/receive is hard.

3. Any policy of intervention is going to leave behind a stream of poorly prioritised actions that are highly questionable.

4. Just because we see something doesn't mean it is there. It is usual for the first impressions to be wrong. Often even after researching an issue thoroughly.

I don't think there is a free speech issue here, but I do question whether Cloudflare has the motivation or capability to actually execute a policy of policing the internet fairly. All the pressure is going to be to police the internet for specific political goals.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#36

Post by [deleted] »

politician wrote: post #11

Cloudflare is oddly political for an infrastructure provider. Every few months or so they seem to be forced to explain why they have decided to deplatform this or that website contrary to their no interference policy. You don’t see AWS or Microsoft having the same frequency of these sorts of reports. What am I missing?

[deleted]

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#37

Post by sourthyme »

judge2020 wrote: post #14

> they are actively lighting these fires and making money by putting them out! A bit of an odd take - it's like the fire department putting out the fire at the known arsonist-for-hire's house, and the police chief happens to run the fire department while doing nothing about the suspiciously wealthy arsonist. The difference is that Cloudflare isn't an actual public service and has no obligation to DDOS protect anyone.

The issue (I believe according to the author) is that Cloudflare is now choosing to withhold protection for Kiwi Farms, taking a moral stance and should be more responsible for other moral obligations or none at all. IE. Should they stop providing protection for more sites? When is the next Kiwi Farms?

I don't agree with the author because it is still early (and the author might be putting Cloudflare under pressure for some personal gain in some rhetoric), but these questions are interesting and is part of the cancel culture we are seeing more of.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#38

Post by hn2017 »

oivey wrote: post #34

This article seems to have been posted to make a false equivalence with the current Kiwifarms situation. There’s a pretty clear difference in urgency between taking down DDOSers and deplatforming a forum that is a gathering point for a mob engaging in mass harassment, stalking, and SWATing. One is a nonviolent crime. The other is a crime targeting an individual that had already escalated to the point of a high risk o…

Precisely, once human lives are in extreme danger, it's a different situation

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#39

Post by Barrin92 »

What's at the heart of the entire Cloudflare situation is this discussion around the platform's alleged neutrality.

I do not understand this at all. If I run a business, and I see that unambiguously bad actors namely abusers, criminals, stalkers, harassers or whatever use my services to facilitate their actions I have a very clear ethical obligation to step in. I don't go "well the law isn't here, it's not my problem". Making money of unsavory individuals, metaphorically selling both shields and guns at the same time is unethical. Dodging that responsibility is moral cowardice.

The law isn't in every place, it's slow as hell and dysfunctional anyhow in some jurisdictions in particular but that's no excuse for inaction when it is within ones power to prevent harm. It should be that simple.

Re: I ran the worlds largest DDoS-for-Hire empire and Cloudflare helped

#40

Post by voidwtf »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15
everyone wrote: post #9

I don't think the author's argument makes sense. Cloudflare's position is that they are neutral and will provide their services to anyone and everyone. They do not make those value judgements deciding who deserves their services or not. The fact that they thus provide their service to booters isn't a flaw in Cloudflare's argument, in fact it's consistent with their position. The author is implying that Cloudflare sho…

Cloudflare is neutral... Unless you are 8chan, Stormfront, or KiwiFarms. It's an odd definition of neutrality that allows one to take decisive values positions.

I think it would be intellectually dishonest to imply that there is no objective “bad”. At some point it goes beyond yelling fire in a theater, into the realm of certain and immediate harm to the whole.

We seem capable of recognizing certain actions and behaviors as universally abhorrent. Nobody can say “Cloudflare is neutral… Unless you are CSAM”, or “Cloudflare is neutral… Unless you are a live video feed of a mass murder event”, and call it an odd definition of neutrality.

There are a lot of sick individuals out there, an unfortunate number of people unable to discern trolling from legitimate discourse, people who may be convinced to commit abhorrent acts or think that they found like minded supporters of their abhorrent behavior. It is not neutral to actively defend and support the ability of a platform to take advantage of those people and or to allow the promotion of such abhorrent behaviors.

It seems like Cloudflare finds themselves walking a tightrope across a bottomless chasm. Any misstep will have dire consequences for the future of Cloudflare and the precedence it sets for the internet as a whole. It seems at this point they have taken a path of extreme caution and attempted to weigh that against collective voice of reason.

Post reply on HN