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That's what the "benevolent feudal overlords" want everyone to think. From all the defeatist DDoS comments I'd say they're doing a good job at it. As Brian Kre

That's what the "benevolent feudal overlords" want everyone to think. From all the defeatist DDoS comments I'd say they're doing a good job at it. As Brian Krebs, myself and numerous other people have pointed out, Cloudflare could end almost all of the DDoS-for-hire attacks in an hour if they actually wanted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577289

rudolf0 10y ago
Sadly, not really true. * Cloudflare has a growing number of competitors, like Incapsula. * These services only protect the front-end of the booter websites. These are barebones CRUD apps for managing accounts and typing the IPs you want DDoS'd. It'd be pretty easy to throw that template up on any other server or domain. Most of that whole workflow could be replaced by IRC, Slack, Discord, Skype along with Bitcoin or similar payment methods. As proof, booter sites do still regularly get DDoS'd (usually by exposing their origin server IP or otherwise fucking up configuration) and breached (often exposing the entire user DB and source code) yet pop back up within a few days and still retain most of their customer base. * They could just move everything to a Tor hidden service, or the equivalent to I2P. It's the botnet and/or list of IPs and URLs (scripts and shells on compromised servers they planted or paid for access to) that serves the foundation of booter services. If that remains untouched, then the booter can stick around indefinitely. Cloudflare's CEO reiterates the same points here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577690 As for whether they have a moral obligation to stop reverse proxying these sites... I think he makes a pretty good argument for why they should be considered a common carrier. They do forward all abuse reports to the respective hosting providers.
nl 10y ago
Yeah, that's pretty simplistic. There's no evidence at all that somehow removing DDOS protection for the payment part of blackmailers web presence will somehow make them go away. Sure, chase down how they do payment. But ultimately a web front end isn't the thing that makes the payment happen.
- kyledrake 10y ago
  > But ultimately a web front end isn't the thing that makes the payment happen. The "brochure" argument makes 100% sense to me for something like the distributed web, but not for a dynamic web application. Brochures just sit there and look at you. Brochures don't take payments and process callbacks, and send commands to attack.
mtourne 10y ago
Interestingly, you link into a thread where you yourself agree that it would be harder than it sounds.

rudolf0 10y ago

Sadly, not really true. * Cloudflare has a growing number of competitors, like Incapsula. * These services only protect the front-end of the booter websites. These are barebones CRUD apps for managing accounts and typing the IPs you want DDoS'd. It'd be pretty easy to throw that template up on any other server or domain. Most of that whole workflow could be replaced by IRC, Slack, Discord, Skype along with Bitcoin or similar payment methods. As proof, booter sites do still regularly get DDoS'd (usually by exposing their origin server IP or otherwise fucking up configuration) and breached (often exposing the entire user DB and source code) yet pop back up within a few days and still retain most of their customer base. * They could just move everything to a Tor hidden service, or the equivalent to I2P. It's the botnet and/or list of IPs and URLs (scripts and shells on compromised servers they planted or paid for access to) that serves the foundation of booter services. If that remains untouched, then the booter can stick around indefinitely. Cloudflare's CEO reiterates the same points here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12577690 As for whether they have a moral obligation to stop reverse proxying these sites... I think he makes a pretty good argument for why they should be considered a common carrier. They do forward all abuse reports to the respective hosting providers.

nl 10y ago

Yeah, that's pretty simplistic. There's no evidence at all that somehow removing DDOS protection for the payment part of blackmailers web presence will somehow make them go away. Sure, chase down how they do payment. But ultimately a web front end isn't the thing that makes the payment happen.

kyledrake 10y ago
> But ultimately a web front end isn't the thing that makes the payment happen. The "brochure" argument makes 100% sense to me for something like the distributed web, but not for a dynamic web application. Brochures just sit there and look at you. Brochures don't take payments and process callbacks, and send commands to attack.

mtourne 10y ago

Interestingly, you link into a thread where you yourself agree that it would be harder than it sounds.