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Cloudflare IPs get blocked by Austria Courts, Sites can't be accessed in Austria
In short: Austria Court gave order to block Cloudflare IPs along with pirate sites' domain names. The result: innocent sites sharing those CDN IPs got blocked in Austria as Austria ISPs have to obey the court order!
example IP: https://bgp.he.net/ip/104.21.36.27#_dns
It's scary, Cloudflare hosts 1000s of sites on single IP. and if one site is hosting pirated content it can harm all other normal sites too sharing those IP. And if this can happen with Cloudflare, it can happen with any CDN!
Comments
so the judges have no knowledge about CDN? Blocking IP addresses??? it's just WTF
Wait. WTF. Oh.. Austria not Australia.
ohh WTF. its Austria!
Noob
words corrected!
Austrians: Oo shiet!
China, NK, Iran, Indonesia, Thailand, Belarus, UAE: First time?
That's a pretty bold stance if you look at things... curious to know what CF might do
If the Austrian government wants to break their own internet I don't think CF will need to compromise themselves here, citizens will probably be forced to use vpn to access international websites
Our country is like the opposite, because of russian ddos attacks we are using cloudflare for government websites.
Cloudflare probably swimming in cash, wiping their tears with hundred dollar bills, and sarcastically saying "Oh no, anyway."
Last time I checked, they were losing $50M+ per quarter.
Meh. It's kind of like "They're a non-profit so they don't get rich" but that's really just about the organization's book keeping, they still get to line their pockets.
I thought only our (!ndian) Govt. hired non-merit-based donkeys to make policies related to technologies. LOL
Is Australia even real?
If you just see CF, how you get the real server IP?
The gov thinks, there are hundreds under same range.
@ascicode sorry but what do you mean?
@comXyz The Austrian gov cant see the real server IP behind Cloudflare, so they assume, the whole range is used by pirated sites.
The real deal is to change the DNS and all works normally for austrian users.
this will be interesting
There's always risks when using shared IP addresses... This is one of the risks. Same with using shared hosting that has thousands of sites on the same IP - there's always a chance that something sketchy will be on it too, and an ISP or government entity will decide to block it.
My assumption: The Austrian judge just read how do a PING command, checked using various website the subnet and done conclusion that whole Cloudflare organisation is evolved in piracy and instead of dealing appropriate for adults just ordered local ISPs to ban the Cloudflar, as it’s easier than contacting them and work together on the issue.
We are currently working on finding a technical solution for the affected websites. At the same time, Austrian Internet users are being asked to put pressure on politicians. Perhaps then the knowledge will prevail there that the blocking of IP addresses always has undesirable side effects, the company’s statement reads.Actually the Austrian gov selected individual (but shared among 1000s sites) exact IPs of Cloudflare to be blocked. Like @WebProject stated in his assumption that the judge just pinged the domain, found the IP and hit block button. This time only individual (but shared IPs) were blocked, next time the court or gov can block IP range.. like 256 ips and if they are shared IPs then it could be 1000 sites x 256 = 256,000 sites on cloudflare or any CDN or web host getting blocked!! Now we are talking about single range of 256 ip blocks, and if find pirate sites distributed among numerous such blocks and then they'll start blocking IP ranges so this number will rise. Last thing is, "oh is that IP belongs to xyz host?, lets block the ASN" can be the court order!
I think it's about time countries started blocking by IP instead of domain name, TBH.
Years ago when piratebay and torrentfreak were constantly getting banned everywhere, they'd pop up the same day with a new URL from a different TLD with the same IP and carry on as if nothing had happened.
Blocking by IP is the best way to take action and the fallout on Cloudflare should make them rethink whether it's appropriate to be proxying paying customers on the same IP address as copyright infringers. For the amount they charge for paid services, each customer should be getting a unique IP.
Mentally strong people don't use IP address.
My router forwards packets by name prefix.
You can block a name prefix without affecting others.
Get a handshake domain and assume they didn't got IPv6 yet.
We know from experience that this is the dumbest idea ever. They tried to block telegram while they were IP hopping on AWS and the fallout was epic.
So no go f... yourself with blocking IPs.
do you remember this?
https://gadgets360.com/internet/news/airtel-said-to-be-sniffing-and-censoring-cloudflares-traffic-in-india-860731
The Austrian government is clever. It puts pressure on Cloudflare, forcing them to block pirate sites voluntarily.
Which country if you don't mind saying?
@rcy026
Gosh, it seems CF didn't put "no country is allowed to block us or our clients!" into their TOS ...