Russian government threatens to block CloudFlare

http://rkn.gov.ru/news/rsoc/news24880.htm

by rbanffy • 12 years ago

97 108 12 years ago

rkn.gov.ru

ShaneOG• 12 years ago

English translation (Google translate) --- The cases made in the Unified Register of banned information network addresses CDN- service CloudFlare. This is due to the active use of this service sites - Russian law violators . When trying to determine the hosting provider such websites whois services indicate ip- address CloudFlare, concealing information about the location of your hosting provider , providing accommodation in this Internet site.

This complicates the interaction Roskomnadzora with this hosting provider and virtually eliminates the possibility of timely removal of illegal information to regain access to locked resources .

CloudFlare representatives refuse to cooperate and do not respond to legal notices Roskomnadzora .

In the absence of reaction on the part of many conscientious CloudFlare Internet Resources using this CDN- service fall under lock operators on the territory of the Russian Federation.

To avoid such situations , it is recommended to place web- sites on the capacities of local hosting providers who operate in good faith and in a timely manner the Russian legislation restricting access to Internet resources with information dissemination in the Russian Federation is prohibited.

crashandburn42• 12 years ago

Can someone translate the google translate? (obviously even better would be a russian speaker translating/summarising the article)

bgentry• 12 years ago

CloudFlare is hosting sites which, according to claims in this article, violate Russian law. CloudFlare is not responding to legal notices from the Russian government (or is not complying with the demands in these notices).

It sounds like they're warning website operators that they will be blocking access to CloudFlare in the future, and that operators should move sites to local hosting providers who comply with local Russian laws.

BESebastian2• 12 years ago

From what I took from it the TL;DR would be that Cloudflare are refusing to reply to Russian legal demands to take down sites or materials considered to be illegal in Russia in a timely manner or at all.

Terretta• 12 years ago

Above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7572336

Donzo• 12 years ago

"CloudFlare representatives refuse to cooperate and do not respond to legal notices"

Ha ha. I wonder if they bother to translate these...

1ris• 12 years ago

Why should they?

swandive3• 12 years ago

Because ummm... people are posting pirated files maybe? We've been fighting this battle for a month now.

dmpk2k2• 12 years ago

That's unfortunate. I happen to run a site somewhat popular with some Russians (on a lark, since I don't understand anything), and it has attracted its share of DDoS attempts.

CloudFlare has been a boon here. I don't pay them to speed the site up, nor to hide from the government, I pay them so I don't need to spend any time on these occasional low-grade DDoS attempts.

mtrimpe10• 12 years ago

I don't think it'll go anywhere fast.

Russia has been on a media-blocking spree, shutting down 'dissenting opinions,' ever since the Ukraine conflict started. With CloudFlare they're running into the problem that their infrastructure can't selectively block specific CloudFlare sites and that blocking all of CloudFlare would cause far too much of an outcry.

That's why this press release was made: as a feeble attempt to influence CloudFlare.

If CloudFlare stands its ground (which it should given the political/human rights nature of the majority of these blocks,) nothing will happen until they block CloudFlare wholesale, which would probably not actually happen unless the conflict escalates into Cold War II territory.

P.S. If anyone from CloudFlare reads this and you're not sure what to do with it; go talk with the US government. I'm fairly sure they're willing to give you all the support you might need.

dzhiurgis2• 12 years ago

Well if Google already said it's OK to do censorship, I don't see why would anyone else would give away their profits.

anton_gogolev• 12 years ago

shutting down 'dissenting opinions,' ever since the Ukraine conflict started

Much, much earlier.

jacquesm• 12 years ago

Props to cloudflare. What with the number of websites that are using cloudflare these days the public outcry against a ban of cloudflare would probably be heard all the way to Warswaw. It might even have a Streisand effect bonus causing people to wonder what exactly it is that they're not supposed to be looking at.

mkriss• 12 years ago

Probably CloudFlare makes difficult for Russian government to censor certain sites.

confluence• 12 years ago

In the end, it's all geopolitics. US funds revolutionary Ukrainian groups in an attempt to bring the Ukraine under the US sphere of influence, Russia annexes Crimea in an effort to reinstate its sphere of influence, US threatens visa restrictions on Russian elite, Russia begins to threaten companies that act as extensions of the US on trumped up charges. And so the cycle goes.

mtrimpe10• 12 years ago

If the US funded the revolution in Ukraine it did a pretty damn good job of finding a representative cross-section of the Ukrainian population to do so.

It's much more likely that it's a classic case of an economically failing petro-dictatorship attempting to stay in power through the age old technique of radicalizing it's population through cracking down on free media, ramping up propaganda and starting some 'little wars' to restore former glory.

Elhana3• 12 years ago

It is a classic case of an economically failing superpower trying to stay afloat with skyrocketing debt, shifting attention from it's internal problems and feeding on wars in other countries. US keep supporting terrorists in Syria and did so in all other uprisings they fueled. None of them ended well for any of the countries involved so far - Libya, Iraq, Syria.

rdl• 12 years ago

How much did CloudFlare have to pay to get this advertisement and endorsement from the Russian Government?

imikushin• 12 years ago

This is a good one :) Build some decent service, have it used by human rights activists, and any sufficiently oppressive government will advertize (the same way) it for free.

ingenter2• 12 years ago

The cases of adding CloudFlare CDN addresses to the unified registry of banned information٭ are becoming more frequent.

It is related to active use of this service by violators of Russian laws.

Attempts to determine hosting provider for such web-sites using whois return CloudFlare IP addresses, hiding whereabouts information for this site in Internet.

This makes interaction between Roskomnadzor and real hosting provider harder and, factually, eliminates the possibility of removing illegal content in time, to restore٭٭ access to the blocked resource.

CloudFlare representatives are refusing to cooperate and do not react to official Roskomnadzor notifications.

Many conscientious resources using this CDN are blocked by ISPs in Russian Federation due to lack of reaction from CloudFlare.

To avoid such situations we recommend hosting web-sites using native (russian) hosting providers which abide Russian laws in good faith and timely restrict access to internet-resources and information which is prohibited for distribution in Russian Federation.

٭yes, it is as bad as it sounds

٭٭implying access will be restored after "illegal content" will be removed

Tobu• 12 years ago

Just to clarify, aside from the footnotes this is a translation of the original page.

dmpk2k2• 12 years ago

They actually do restore the site.

Russian authorities have blackholed my site a couple times because some trolls posted illegal material there, and then turned around and reported that site to the authorities. Once the files were brought to my attention and removed, the blackhole was also removed.

As an aside, I hope authorities (and hosts) realise this is a trivial and common tactic to take down websites. It's one of the cheapest and least technical attacks available. Only the really large sites (the 0.1%) are immune to it due to their stature. I'm tempted to say that attackers employing this method are more skilled, because they understand risk-tree analysis better than the clowns with huge fancy botnets.

memracom3• 12 years ago

I think that Ruskomnadzor does understand the dynamic nature of the Internet which is why your sites were restored when you removed the illegal material. They don't want to block you, they just want to stop Russians from ignoring the law and sharing copyrighted materials.

Just remember, Russia is not the Soviet Union, neither the real one nor the imagined one that the West is always going on about. Russia is a technically advanced country that intends to be the most modern country in the world in the 21st century. A force to be reckoned with.

kmfrk• 12 years ago

Probably a good idea to follow how this plays out, in case leaders like Cameron and Erdogan decide to take a page out of the same playbook.

tempodox2• 12 years ago

However, not every populace is as accustomed to falling into line with their government as the Russians are. Russia is still about 200 years behind the standards of civilization elsewhere.

rbanffy• 12 years ago

If I were you, I'd stop at acknowledging most of them have no clear idea of what a democracy, or even rule of law, looks like. On many aspects of "civilisation" they are pretty much on par with the rest of the world.

hotwatermusic2• 12 years ago

Russian here. It's only small part of what is coming from the goverment in near future... Soon, if you are using/registering ".ru"-domain and use it, you will have to "register" it in gov - pay ~30$ and wait for 5 days. If you doesn't do that, then created site can be immediately blocked via providers with no warning on any day. So a lot of us moving to .com now adays... Worst is yet to come. Now we have a blacklist of domains, and maybe have to expect whitelist in 2015 or so.

pistle• 12 years ago

Emigrate. We appreciate the intelligence and skill of our Russian hacker friends. Let's not lose a generation of highly-skilled talent due to psycho-nostalgic policies. You guys have come too far for all this.

kordless3• 12 years ago

Did you see this? http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/305590/general+immigrat...

joelthelion• 12 years ago

You might as well skip the US who is not very hacker friendly either and come directly to western Europe :)

kovrik2• 12 years ago

Well, I'm a java developer from Russia and I want to emigrate. But don't know how. A lot of people here want to leave Russia. But it's not as easy as going from one state to another (USA) or going from one EU country to another.

hotwatermusic2• 12 years ago

Sound like a sweet invitation and not a bad idea, thank you! :)

kordless3• 12 years ago

Sounds like a good use for Namecoin and .bit domains.

olegkikin• 12 years ago

That wouldn't stop them from banning CloudFlare's IPs.

trurl123• 12 years ago

This is a plan only that probably will not be accepted

jmedwards2• 12 years ago

It took CloudFlare 5 weeks to even respond to one of our DMCA takedown notices, let alone take action (which would simply include passing the DMCA notice onto the origin hosting provider).

It is very frustrating - CloudFlare is used to protect a number of warez and file sharing forums and websites, but we struggle to get hold of the origin host information and have to go through CloudFlare who clearly are not geared up to deal with it.

abc123xyz• 12 years ago

Did you actually follow the DMCA procedure and send them a letter to their registered agent, as is the law?

Anyways the worlds largest pirate ebook site LIBGEN.ORG is being run out of Moscow apartment, so pot, kettle, black

jmedwards2• 12 years ago

Yes, and followed up 5 times.

kordless3• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, what happens if you send a DMCA to the actual company who's responsible for the content and they don't respond?

tempodox2• 12 years ago

"... information which is prohibited for distribution in Russian Federation"

— And what information would that be exactly? Maybe anything that wouldn't agree with Putin & his cronies? The Russian gov't has been known to sit on their hands (to put it politely) while dissenting journalists were being killed off in the open street in bright daylight.

Fuck the Russian government.

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

to put it politely

Yes, you were almost too polite given that these journalists mostly had anti-government attitudes.

ingenter2• 12 years ago

- War propaganda; pornography and antisocial behavior propaganda

- Free speech abuse: Extremism

- Free speech abuse: Drug production and acquisition information

- Free speech abuse: Secret information disclosure

- Free speech abuse: Latent influence (e.g. hipnosis)

- Anything related to extremism

- Malicious programs

- Information which is a crime by itself (slander, humiliation, call for terrorism, offer for a drug use, etc.)

- Improper advertisement (alcohol and tobacco ads)

- Secret inforation

itsuart• 12 years ago

It's worth to note, that they can and actually do block addresses without court order.

exo7622• 12 years ago

And in practice anything they want. Example: navalny.livejournal.com is not available in Russia for some time. Not chosen articles, whole blog.

mtrimpe10• 12 years ago

Information which is a crime by itself.

Which includes gay propaganda, i.e. anything that mentions homosexuality in a positive or accepting context.

anonbanker4• 12 years ago

Anyone want to start a pool on when "Free Speech Abuse" becomes a thing in the US?

weirdcat2• 12 years ago

From what I understand, the political aspect of the issue aside, the problem is that if a site is served via CloudFlare, there's no easy way to identify and communicate with the actual hosting company.

Off the top of my head, this could be solved by adding the origin IP in CloudFlare's HTTP response headers. Am I wrong? Or this makes no sense (or it's there already) and I just don't know what I'm talking about?

EDIT: Ha! Got downvoted, probably because someone thought I want to help Russia censor the web. :)

Thing is, CloudFlare shouldn't be responsible for taking down sites, whatever the basis of the takedown might be; this should be addressed at the host level, not this or any other proxy.

krapp2• 12 years ago

the problem is that if a site is served via CloudFlare, there's no easy way to identify and communicate with the actual hosting company

Isn't that the the entire point, though?

weirdcat2• 12 years ago

I don't follow. I use CloudFlare to make my sites respond faster and be protected from DOS attacks. Hiding the place where my files are stored is not why CloudFlare exists -- at least I thought so.

Of course one might argue that revealing the origin IP exposes it to DOS attacks, but this is a different issue.

pawelkomarnicki2• 12 years ago

Too many gay porn with Putin leaked perhaps ;) He must've been like "Kurva, abort abort, block teh whole interwebs!" :D

EGreg• 12 years ago

Native-sounding translation:

The cases of adding CloudFlare CDN-service internet addresses to the unified registry of prohibited information have become more frequent. This is related to the active use of the above service by sites which violate Russian law. During attempts to ascertain the hosting provider of these websites, whois reveals ip addresses belonging to CloudFlare, hiding information about the whereabouts of the hosting provider of the actual site.

This makes cooperation of the ROSKOMNADZOR[1] with the actual hosting provider difficult and basically eliminates the possibility of removing illegal information in order to restore access to blocked resources.

CloudFlare representatives refuse to cooperate and do not respond to official notifications by ROSKOMNADZOR.

As a result of CloudFlare's lack of response, many conscientious internet resources using this CDN-service are falling under[2] blocking restrictions by ISPs on Russian Federation territory.

To avoid similar problems, we recommend hosting websites using the facilities of domestic hosting providers, which comply with Russian legislation in good faith and restrict access, in a timely manner, to internet resources containing information whose dissemination in the Russian Federation is banned.

[1] Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (ROSKOMNADZOR)

[2] Unclear from the text whether this already happened or will happen

dsabanin• 12 years ago

Oh, how glad I am that I got out of that shithole.

anonbanker4• 12 years ago

Was working for CF really that bad?

joshfraser• 12 years ago

This is why most CDNs like Akamai don't allow illegal sites to use their service. You have a shared-destiny with all their other customers. If someone goes after a site like Rescator for selling credit cards online or blocks 4chan for child-porn, your site can be affected because it's served from the same Cloudflare network.

A few CDN's have build entirely separate networks with a different ASN's for keeping their more questionable content away from the bulk of their customers. I've not checked if Cloudflare have done this or not, but it would make a lot of sense. This segmentation can really help. For example, a bunch of hacker groups use Cloudflare and by putting them all on the same IPs, you can magically stop them from DDOS'ing each other.

puppetmaster3• 12 years ago

Related to CloudFare, I know what a real CDN is, but I'm not sure what cloudfare does useful at all, ex:

http://halfelf.org/2013/i-dont-understand-cloudflare

http://pergento.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/cloudflare-slowed-d...

http://amix.dk/blog/post/19627

Like they tell you to use CloudFare w/ a CDN. what? It appears that they are a good marketing company, and OK tech, but not clear to me what. Compare it to real CDN Fastly or MaxCDN.

So other than marketing, what does Cloudfare do when you pay them?

celsoazevedo2• 12 years ago

Cloudflare is a CDN with security options (they stop bots, spam, ddos, etc). In some cases websites load faster, in others load slower... you have to try and see.

I'm using Cloudflare on 3 websites ($30/month) and on the last 30 days they saved 4.9 TB in bandwidth [1]. The "5TB" plan on MaxCDN costs $299/month.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/xqQ3Aea.png

Russian government threatens to block CloudFlare

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