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Cloudflare’s misguided reliance on Javascript Paywalls[1] is fundamentally hostile to open web. It’s essentially a form of DRM. And they don’t even bother to i

by deno 10y ago

Cloudflare’s misguided reliance on Javascript Paywalls[1] is fundamentally hostile to open web. It’s essentially a form of DRM. And they don’t even bother to implement it properly—for example if your site tries to follow best practices and uses a separate domain for your static assets, you will just get errors on your static assets, resulting in a page with broken styling and no images. That despite pissing off your users by having them go through the Google hosted captcha (which also breaks all the time btw[2][3]). One of the websites that was horribly broken by this was Stack Overflow. As anyone trying to stay safe on public WiFi by using VPN can attest. Coincidentally, Cloudflare has lost Stack Overflow as their customer recently: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/323537/cloudflare-is-ruining-stack-overflow-for-me-with-its-recaptcha https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/323537/cloudflare-i... They’re now behind fastly. _ [1] https://ipfs.pics/QmTZo6oPKHwUgWB7p7LfZwZsVQJV1n7k9qNQNZBCEuYSb5 https://ipfs.pics/QmTZo6oPKHwUgWB7p7LfZwZsVQJV1n7k9qNQNZBCEu... [2] https://ipfs.pics/QmeuJjgV621NV9aNKyNAUoEHdWZYtzCrwkLHoHneg3aSJE https://ipfs.pics/QmeuJjgV621NV9aNKyNAUoEHdWZYtzCrwkLHoHneg3... [3] https://ipfs.pics/QmRWcCkBdaG214GKttkGFcadncUJ6YvfMTSE8jiAxAtEtk https://ipfs.pics/QmRWcCkBdaG214GKttkGFcadncUJ6YvfMTSE8jiAxA... bonus picture: https://ipfs.pics/QmPkncvs2R9EkhZQuzPzWYs4z7UUdKqQzg1k8mc7y5X1pN https://ipfs.pics/QmPkncvs2R9EkhZQuzPzWYs4z7UUdKqQzg1k8mc7y5...

tracker1 10y ago
More likely the Python client is using the stock python user-agent, this should be customized per application. The reason for this, is most stock scrapers and malicious agents are using stock engines with defaults.
kyledrake 10y ago
And if you turn off Cloudflare's protection to fix this, somebody that wants to censor you and has $20 will use one of the hundreds of DDoS booters (most of them are behind Cloudflare) to nuke your site, unless you're Brian Krebs and qualify for Project Shield. I'm very optimistic about the direction the internet is going in right now.
- t3ra 10y ago
  (Sorry for the non-useful contribution but...) I LOVE THIS COMMENT!
- kefka 10y ago
  And notice those weird hashed links? IPFS hashes. As a quick primer, it's a hash that points towards a directory of content. Everything's deduplicated. Based on Torrents, GIT, and self-referential filesystems. an IPFS hash is immutable. The hash points at the hash, no matter what. Indestructible. Publish stuff by ipfs add -r folder An IPNS hash points towards an IPFS hash. It's a pointer you publish every 12 hours. It IS mutable. Do this by ipfs name publish <ipfs key of resource> The browser plugins with IPFS running allow you to pull the DNS text record of the IPNS hash, and you never touch the website! Example, PageNodes : http://ipfs.io/ipns/QmVjH4F65fnqy1GkBBYiuAkdazKzYsw3LbMVANGFeBGB8e/ http://ipfs.io/ipns/QmVjH4F65fnqy1GkBBYiuAkdazKzYsw3LbMVANGF... POINTS AT ---> http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbLPfyehFnViKZpU237P6a6DpjCfWFSoDBMQFGUAgYW2t/ http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbLPfyehFnViKZpU237P6a6DpjCfWFSoDBMQFGU... Tl;Dr. DDoS makes no sense regarding IPFS. Everybody makes the network faster.
  - delluminatus 10y ago
    Sorry, but the OP wasn't talking about ipfs at all. He was talking about Cloudflare. Having said that, thanks for the interesting digression. You've made me want to try out ipfs.
    - kefka 10y ago
      Heh, in my mind it made perfect sense. CloudFlare is a anti-DDoS and CDN network. IPFS is a CDN protocol that anyone can join or put files into. It doesn't quite hide the endpoints, but anyone can inject data. It does what CloudFlare does, but better. And as more people/nodes get online, free and ubiquitous.
  - internals 10y ago
    This was very informative, thank you!
problems 10y ago
CloudFlare's CAPTCHA can be trivially disabled by the site owners if they so choose. It's a trade-off though - many leave it enabled to prevent a layer 7 attack... there's not many other options to do that and there's absolutely none available to anyone but the biggest sites.

by deno 10y ago

tracker1 10y ago

More likely the Python client is using the stock python user-agent, this should be customized per application. The reason for this, is most stock scrapers and malicious agents are using stock engines with defaults.

kyledrake 10y ago

And if you turn off Cloudflare's protection to fix this, somebody that wants to censor you and has $20 will use one of the hundreds of DDoS booters (most of them are behind Cloudflare) to nuke your site, unless you're Brian Krebs and qualify for Project Shield. I'm very optimistic about the direction the internet is going in right now.

t3ra 10y ago
(Sorry for the non-useful contribution but...) I LOVE THIS COMMENT!
kefka 10y ago
And notice those weird hashed links? IPFS hashes. As a quick primer, it's a hash that points towards a directory of content. Everything's deduplicated. Based on Torrents, GIT, and self-referential filesystems. an IPFS hash is immutable. The hash points at the hash, no matter what. Indestructible. Publish stuff by ipfs add -r folder An IPNS hash points towards an IPFS hash. It's a pointer you publish every 12 hours. It IS mutable. Do this by ipfs name publish <ipfs key of resource> The browser plugins with IPFS running allow you to pull the DNS text record of the IPNS hash, and you never touch the website! Example, PageNodes : http://ipfs.io/ipns/QmVjH4F65fnqy1GkBBYiuAkdazKzYsw3LbMVANGFeBGB8e/ http://ipfs.io/ipns/QmVjH4F65fnqy1GkBBYiuAkdazKzYsw3LbMVANGF... POINTS AT ---> http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbLPfyehFnViKZpU237P6a6DpjCfWFSoDBMQFGUAgYW2t/ http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmbLPfyehFnViKZpU237P6a6DpjCfWFSoDBMQFGU... Tl;Dr. DDoS makes no sense regarding IPFS. Everybody makes the network faster.
- delluminatus 10y ago
  Sorry, but the OP wasn't talking about ipfs at all. He was talking about Cloudflare. Having said that, thanks for the interesting digression. You've made me want to try out ipfs.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Heh, in my mind it made perfect sense. CloudFlare is a anti-DDoS and CDN network. IPFS is a CDN protocol that anyone can join or put files into. It doesn't quite hide the endpoints, but anyone can inject data. It does what CloudFlare does, but better. And as more people/nodes get online, free and ubiquitous.
- internals 10y ago
  This was very informative, thank you!

problems 10y ago

CloudFlare's CAPTCHA can be trivially disabled by the site owners if they so choose. It's a trade-off though - many leave it enabled to prevent a layer 7 attack... there's not many other options to do that and there's absolutely none available to anyone but the biggest sites.