CloudFlare helps save Wikileaks' bacon

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/13/cloudflare-helps-save-wikileaks-bacon/

by jgrahamc • 14 years ago

101 41 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

ck23• 14 years ago

He really thinks the government push back is going to be via legal channels?

Who does he think is doing the ddos in the first place?

The ddos is happening at over 40GB/sec (2TB every minute). You need massive resources for that.

jgrahamc4• 14 years ago

Where does the 40GBps number come from? Wikileaks appears to have tweeted about 10Gbps. That's nothing unusual for CloudFlare to handle.

ck23• 14 years ago

Oh I guess cnet only mentioned the 40gb upper end, I didn't see the tweet.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wikileaks+40gb+%22per+second...

sp3322• 14 years ago

Does that number include all the mirrors that are also down?

ck23• 14 years ago

I didn't realize who you were at first.

You best set up a page that just says, "as long as this page is up, we have NOT been served a National Security Letter from the FBI".

Because it's going to contain a gag-order that prevents you from even talking to your lawyer. So probably want to ask them ahead of time what to do when you get the letter.

fiatmoney• 14 years ago

Does CloudFlare have experience identifying the source of attacks like this? Because that could be quite interesting.

jgrahamc4• 14 years ago

I wrote up a little about our DDoS statistics here: http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-wednesday-witching-hour-cloud...

One important conclusion is that it's very hard to identify the source for most DDoS attacks because the IP address is either forged, or innocent. Identifying the true source would mean getting into the CnC of the botnet being used. Our business isn't about tracking down who, but simply stopping attacks.

andrewcooke• 14 years ago

thanks for accepting them as customers. i hope that it works out (i imagine a larger test will be when something with less popular support - neo nazis or child porn or whatever - becomes a client). free speech matters. and controlling speech should be - in the end - something that is done through a visible, accountable process.

[edited to change "taking a stand" to something less objectionable(?). but contrast this with the payment service providers.]

blibble2• 14 years ago

I've been behind a large often-targeted service for the last 10 years or so, and most of the large attacks we get are pretty easily filtered as our service is TCP (like CloudFlare), and most of the attacks we get are either ping or UDP floods, which we drop at the boundary.

a little harder is the SYN flood with spoofed addresses, how on earth can you filter those?

sp3322• 14 years ago

I'm not clear on how this works... Doesn't cloudflare just replace the domain's DNS record to point to their own servers? So an attack on the original wikileaks IPs would still be fairly effective. Maybe less effective because CF delivers cached content to normal users, but it would keep WL from delivering large files to the CF servers to begin with.

StavrosK• 14 years ago

Well, it's easier to block packets coming from every IP except CloudFlare's IPs, so I guess that would be one way of doing it.

eli• 14 years ago

It wouldn't be too terribly hard to switch IP addresses once you're behind CF.

gary4gar• 14 years ago

I think this move will help establish cloudflare as a strong brand. Great marketing!

stfu• 14 years ago

Cloudflare's stand on free speech is really impressive. I just wish more companies would have such a strong position on that issue. They deserver all the marketing/pr they can get, but first signs are already showing that they not just making friends with their position: http://www.cloudflare-watch.org/

blake8086• 14 years ago

I think their stand will only be impressive when it results in a situation where they have to decide between money and "free speech".

interknot• 14 years ago

FWIW "www.cloudflare-watch.org" currently resolves to an IP address used with a DSL connection (adsl----.dsl.snantx.swbell.net).

mp3geek• 14 years ago

Will the massive DDos on wikileaks affect other cloudflare users? increased latiency/server load?

jgrahamc4• 14 years ago

Unlikely. This stuff is our bread and butter. We are under DDoS attack 40% of the time 24/7 (see: http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-wednesday-witching-hour-cloud...). A 10Gbps attack is not unusual for us and we've seen much higher. We have a lot of experience dealing with DDoS attacks.

jasonlingx• 14 years ago

You guys are the best!!! :) now if only you supported wildcard dns so I can protect my Wordpress site as well

mtgx2• 14 years ago

If the FBI comes knocking down your door and ask your to stop helping Wikileaks, I think we'll have confirmation of who's been doing this to Wikileaks.

jbooth• 14 years ago

Even the FBI wouldn't be that obvious about it.

Now that I think of it, this is a great job creation program. Pay people to attack wikileaks and wikileaks pays people to defend them. Sort of like breaking windows and then someone has to fix them.

alttab2• 14 years ago

Ok, Zorg.

cagenut• 14 years ago

That network provider legal protection, does it apply if you're caching? Are you caching wikileaks or just proxy/filtering?

alttab2• 14 years ago

And the initial product offering is free fellas.

fragmede• 14 years ago

> On Friday Wikileaks complained on Twitter that CloudFlare had preemptively blocked the organization from signing up.

I wonder what the actual error message is. Wikileaks actually had to complain on Twitter before finding out they weren't actually blocked, just that there was a special signup process for high-volume accounts.

If there are high-volume site operators who didn't want to tweet CloudFlare for whatever reason, I wonder who else they could list as customers by now.

1010011010• 14 years ago

Headline in a few days: CloudFlare servers impounded on suspicion of "piracy" or some such, CloudFlare executives arrested.

/sigh

CloudFlare helps save Wikileaks' bacon

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