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You're seriously comparing DDoS attack markets to doctors? It takes an intense contortion of the concept of freedom of speech to apply it to this malicious and
by kyledrake 10y ago
You're seriously comparing DDoS attack markets to doctors?
It takes an intense contortion of the concept of freedom of speech to apply it to this malicious and illegal activity. I guess under that logic it's also okay for a personnel security company to host (or hide behind their nginx server) a hitman-for-hire marketplace too, as long as they're not the ones doing the actual killing?
DDoS attacks (and their store fronts) are not about freedom of speech. They are, always and everywhere, about the suppression and censoring of speech through violence. Protecting them means that you are protecting violence.
But if you're adamant on this being free speech, fine. Where's the free speech criticism for Cloudflare shutting down those phishing and malware distribution sites? Why are DDoS attack sites magically different and deserving of freedom of speech protection?
- dajohnson89 10y agoHonest question -- how do you feel about someone downtown with a bullhorn, calling for terrorism or some other malicious act?
- wpietri 10y agoAt least in the US, "advocacy of the use of force" is not protected by the constitution if it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and is "likely to incite or produce such action". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio As an example, incitement to riot is a crime: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2102
- tokenizerrr 10y agoCloudflare will obviously respond to law enforcement requests of what the origin server is. Krebs is not law enforcement, and neither are other DDoSers. What is your problem?
- kyledrake 10y agoLet's say I'm running a site. It gets DDoSed. Almost all of the booters are behind Cloudflare. How do I proceed here? Call the local police? Email abuse@fbi.gov? Most people just panic and start paying Cloudflare for protection. Pretty much for the same reason that most people pay into protection rackets instead of reporting them to law enforcement, because they're afraid and their livelihood is at risk. Cloudflare also has this wonderful policy of forwarding abuse reports (with information on who reported) to the booter site in question. You can imagine the consequences of that from what just happened to Krebs for doing reporting on them.
- kalleboo 10y agoLet's say CloudFlare didn't exist and you got DDoSed. Now what do you do?
- kyledrake 10y agoI'm not saying that Cloudflare or DDoS mitigation shouldn't exist. I'm saying that should not protect sites that are doing the attacks that they profit to defend against.
- kalleboo 10y agoMy point is the traffic isn't coming FROM CloudFlare. When you're attacked, there's no way of knowing who is attacking you. Your recourses are the same even if CloudFlare wasn't protecting the brochure/control panel websites of the services. If you are being DDoSed. What do you do? Call the local police? Email abuse@fbi.gov?
- kyledrake 10y agoIt's not a "brochure", it's how they meet their customers and take payment from them for their attacks. It's how they make it so anyone in the world can launch a 100Gbps+ attack in 5 minutes for $20. If you get DDoS attacked, you panic and look for expensive DDoS mitigation, or you go out of business. Legally, enforcement for the specific attacker is almost impossible. Cloudflare both knows this and benefits from protecting it. They realize that customer connection is critical to the system functioning and yet continue to defend it.