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Comment by kazinator

5 hours ago

If this is HTTPS, how would Cloudfare have the certificate for your domain so that browsers don't warn about a mismatch?

Or is it that when you sign over DNS to a provider, they can take over your cert? They can "ass-cert" their own? :)

Yes, the person who controls the DNS controls the certificate.

What a certificate is supposed to verify is that traffic is going to the right place. If you designate cloudflare as the rightful host of your website then they can get a certificate.

This isn't an edge case though. This is cloudflare's primary product. It is why users use them.

As far as I know they terminate all TLS; it’s one of the tradeoffs using them.

  • They have a product called Magic Transit that offers DDoS protection and such for plain IP traffic, where Cloudflare does not terminate TLS. Pricing is not public but starts in the five-digit USD per month range according to people I talk to.

    This may tell you something about how keen Cloudflare are to handle traffic they themselves cannot decrypt.

    • Magic Transit uses BGP magic to work. That only makes sense at scale - i believe you have to have your own ASN for it to work.

      Realistically its a totally different product, and 5 digit price is probably cheap relative to competitors in that space.