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First, let me say that the aggressive approach to actually making encryption happen that CloudFlare has been pushing recently is very commendable. The hard part

by pdkl95 12y ago

First, let me say that the aggressive approach to actually making encryption happen that CloudFlare has been pushing recently is very commendable. The hard part about finally retiring the old plaintext protocols we currently are stuck with is critical mass - nobody sees the point when plaintext seems to "work just fine". The various steps CloudFlare has taken to encourage SSL will go a long way towards reversing that attitude. That said, I worry about the future we are creating by entrusting so much security and traffic to a single point of failure.[1] It seems to me that CloudFlare is positioning themselves as another Google or Facebook, where a key feature of their business is that they get to track the web history of a large portion of internet users. Much like Google gets to have a lot of my email when other party is @gmail.com, CloudFlare gets click histories by people using their CDN and caching/filtering servers. While I don't really know anything about the motives and personalities behind the company, I can give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Unfortunately, their motives don't matter - in a world where "national security letters" Prism, XKeyscore, and the like exist, CloudFlare's motives may not matter. Even more concerning is that while it my hard to avoid Google's tracking, it is at least theoretically possible. With CloudFlare (or any similar service) we are stuck with a situation similar to tinyurl/t.co/bit.ly [2] where content is hidden behind serves from which you have to request the real URL (or in this case, the content itself). Don't get me wrong - SSL becoming significantly more common is good regardless of what else is going on, and CloudFlare still deserves a lot of praise for advancing a problem that has been so resistant to progress in the past. I would even agree that CloudFlare's caching services and security protections are (very) good engineering techniques that we should be using. It just seems like everybody is (yet again) setting up a single point of failure that will suddenly have very significant consequences the minute somebody with real power decides they want those very-revealing server logs. [1] I'd be the first to admit I don't have the best understanding of how CloudFlare works; corrections to any misunderstandings I may have about their business or tech would be greatly appreciated. [2] http://preview.tinyurl.com/feckless-imbroglio http://preview.tinyurl.com/feckless-imbroglio

jgrahamc 12y ago
It seems to me that CloudFlare is positioning themselves as another Google or Facebook, where a key feature of their business is that they get to track the web history of a large portion of internet users. CloudFlare's business model is not offering a free service and figure out how to make money. It's getting people to pay us money and those people are our actual customers who run web sites: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Unfortunately, their motives don't matter - in a world where "national security letters" Prism, XKeyscore, and the like exist, CloudFlare's motives may not matter. https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency
- pdkl95 12y ago
  I get that stuff - their transparency report is, of course, also very encouraging and another boost to their reputation. (I'll mention that they have more "warrant canaries" than I was aware of previously, which IS a good sign, though the utility of such statements is somewhat uncertain) My concern is that the single point of failure still exists. CloudFlare may have the best of intentions, but they aren't going to be able to stop a national security letter or other threat. Also, attitudes (and CEO/BoD) can change. From a purely engineering point of view, one good hack is what stands between those valuable logs or ssl certs and the various parties that would love to have them. Contrast this with the old manufacturing practice of always requiring a second source for key parts or services, though the analogy isn't perfect.
  - chrisdone 12y ago
    Yes, transparency reports don't mean anything to me. Just because a company says "we're good guys, seriously, look at some numbers", are we to be so impressed? The flaw is not the company's actions, but the user's misplaced trust in a separate, private entity with their data.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Do they have a Zero Knowledge policy or anything close to it, though? It doesn't matter if they don't make money from it, if they still collect all the data. I don't know how a service that's meant to cache data is supposed to be "zero knowledge", but hopefully they can do something about that - until it's too late and authorities already have a 1,000 requests lined up for their data.
  - tomp 12y ago
    It's not just supposed to cache data (though it probably makes sense for most static data), it can also act as a firewall for your dynamic data, improving response times and preventing DDoS.

by pdkl95 12y ago

jgrahamc 12y ago

It seems to me that CloudFlare is positioning themselves as another Google or Facebook, where a key feature of their business is that they get to track the web history of a large portion of internet users. CloudFlare's business model is not offering a free service and figure out how to make money. It's getting people to pay us money and those people are our actual customers who run web sites: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Unfortunately, their motives don't matter - in a world where "national security letters" Prism, XKeyscore, and the like exist, CloudFlare's motives may not matter. https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency

pdkl95 12y ago
I get that stuff - their transparency report is, of course, also very encouraging and another boost to their reputation. (I'll mention that they have more "warrant canaries" than I was aware of previously, which IS a good sign, though the utility of such statements is somewhat uncertain) My concern is that the single point of failure still exists. CloudFlare may have the best of intentions, but they aren't going to be able to stop a national security letter or other threat. Also, attitudes (and CEO/BoD) can change. From a purely engineering point of view, one good hack is what stands between those valuable logs or ssl certs and the various parties that would love to have them. Contrast this with the old manufacturing practice of always requiring a second source for key parts or services, though the analogy isn't perfect.
- chrisdone 12y ago
  Yes, transparency reports don't mean anything to me. Just because a company says "we're good guys, seriously, look at some numbers", are we to be so impressed? The flaw is not the company's actions, but the user's misplaced trust in a separate, private entity with their data.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
higherpurpose 12y ago
Do they have a Zero Knowledge policy or anything close to it, though? It doesn't matter if they don't make money from it, if they still collect all the data. I don't know how a service that's meant to cache data is supposed to be "zero knowledge", but hopefully they can do something about that - until it's too late and authorities already have a 1,000 requests lined up for their data.
- tomp 12y ago
  It's not just supposed to cache data (though it probably makes sense for most static data), it can also act as a firewall for your dynamic data, improving response times and preventing DDoS.