Comment by pierat
3 years ago
Even though they will engage on your ticket, the problem is a business level problem they help create and solve at the same time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32709329
> "Without CloudFlare's "neutral" security service offerings I couldn't have facilitated millions of DDoS attacks."
For those of you who are blaming website operators;
> "As someone who has previously justified their actions by saying "I am not directly causing harm, the responsibility flows downstream to my end users" I can tell you it is a shaky defense at best. "
The crux of the issue is this:
> "CloudFlare is a fire department that prides itself on putting out fires at any house regardless of the individual that lives there, what they forget to mention is they are actively lighting these fires and making money by putting them out!"
The crooks and the ilk of the internet get a free ride to do their 'shark infestations' everywhere online thanks to CF. However the real humans are the ones harmed here. One person complaining loudly got a ticket addressed. The other 10000 affected won't.
> CloudFlare is a fire department that prides itself on putting out fires at any house regardless of the individual that lives there, what they forget to mention is they are actively lighting these fires and making money by putting them out!
This doesn’t seem like a fair analogy. When I read the quote I expected to dig into the article and find that Cloudflare was somehow intentionally optimizing their network for carrying out DDoS attacks against non-customers in some sort of shady under the table dealings.
In this case the fire department is not lighting fires. They are not committing arson. They are saving all houses including the houses of arsonists.
It doesn’t seem like this kid used Cloudflare to carry out DDoS attacks (burn down houses). It seems like they used Cloudflare to keep their own house from burning down and then went and committed arson on their own.