Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Shells Virtual Desktop
BMail.ag - Secure Email Service
Server.net
CPLicense.net
VPS Server
Buy VPN
Vultr
VMs for AI
HostDare
ReliableSite White-Label Dedicated Hosting for Resellers
InterServer VPS
BMail.ag - Secure Email Service
Best VPN
High-Performance Bare Metal Server Solutions
Karvl.com
Server Mania Cloud Hosting
DataWagon Hosting
AlphaVPS Hosting
Evoxt.com
Clouvider
VPS Hosting with NVMe
Residential IPs in the US & 4G Mobile Proxies in EU & US with Unlimited Bandwidth
ReliableSite White-Label Dedicated Hosting for Resellers
Rabisu - Hosting Solutions
Shells Virtual Desktop
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Why does Cloudflare suck so bad?

124

Comments

  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    Well, they could try. Probably won't fix the issue though.

    Yeah, pretty unlikely. My browser switches pretty evenly between claiming to be FF on Linux, Windows or MacOS. Doesn't really make any noticeable difference. Like i've said, claiming to be a wrong type of browser makes Cloudflare choke during captchas but as long as i report as some kind of Firefox they are fine with it.

    It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    Feels like I've mentioned several times now that the people developing these systems are well aware that there will be false positives, and so long as the positives outweigh the negatives, it's worth it, yet again and again these types of comments come:

    @tentor said: So any Linux user using Firefox is an automated traffic in your opinion?

    I don't know if I'm explaining it in a weird way, but to me it dosen't seem that complicated.

  • tentortentor Member, Host Rep

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

  • edited May 2024

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said: So any Linux user using Firefox is an automated traffic in your opinion?

    I don't know if I'm explaining it in a weird way, but to me it dosen't seem that complicated.

    Yeah, it's likely going to add some points to some score. Maybe more maybe less, who knows? As long as it isn't enough to cross whatever threshold there is it's not like anyone is going to notice anyways.

    It's kind of surprising that Linux user agents get used in such a way though. All rouge crawlers i've written claimed to be the most common browser of that time running on the most common OS of that time (aka Windows). Using anything else seems massively stupid. You want to blend in as best as possible not stick out like a sore thumb after all...

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

  • edited May 2024

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

    Easy. Just protect your whole site with htaccess and have an error page telling users to call you. Once they've done a little 15 minute questionnaire you sit down, create a personal account for them and in the evening you send them a registered letter containing their account data.

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

    Easy. Just protect your whole site with htaccess and have an error page telling users to call you. Once they've done a little 15 minute questionnaire you sit down, create a personal account for and in the evening you walk over to the post office to send them a registered letter containing their account data.

    A solution I imagine people that consider an automated system broken for having false positives find resonable.

  • edited May 2024

    @emgh said:

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

    Easy. Just protect your whole site with htaccess and have an error page telling users to call you. Once they've done a little 15 minute questionnaire you sit down, create a personal account for and in the evening you walk over to the post office to send them a registered letter containing their account data.

    A solution I imagine people that consider an automated system broken for having false positives find resonable.

    Well, it's a very smooth solution, you have to admit that. In little more than a week people will be happily browsing your site checking if it has that information they were looking for.

    Not to mention you'll quickly amass the biggest collection of broken English known to man and be on the phone 24/7 (which sooner or later will lead to an even smoother solution as there'll be no time left to build any sites anyways).

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

    Easy. Just protect your whole site with htaccess and have an error page telling users to call you. Once they've done a little 15 minute questionnaire you sit down, create a personal account for and in the evening you walk over to the post office to send them a registered letter containing their account data.

    A solution I imagine people that consider an automated system broken for having false positives find resonable.

    Well, it's a very smooth solution, you have to admit that. In little more than a week people will be happily browsing your site checking if it has that information they were looking for.

    Not to mention you'll quickly amass the biggest collection of broken English known to man and be on the phone 24/7 (which sooner or later will lead to an even smoother solution as there'll be no time left to build any sites anyways).

    IF I'd do this, I'd hire Calin to take the calls and respond to the emails. His instructions: "Give them a hard time and make sure they're honest."

    Thanked by 1totally_not_banned
  • @emgh said:

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    @tentor said:

    @emgh said: It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    I just don't agree with this approach. Being that one "false-positive" is not something I wish to encounter as a user either.

    I can't think of any counter measure that won't have any false positive.

    Easy. Just protect your whole site with htaccess and have an error page telling users to call you. Once they've done a little 15 minute questionnaire you sit down, create a personal account for and in the evening you walk over to the post office to send them a registered letter containing their account data.

    A solution I imagine people that consider an automated system broken for having false positives find resonable.

    Well, it's a very smooth solution, you have to admit that. In little more than a week people will be happily browsing your site checking if it has that information they were looking for.

    Not to mention you'll quickly amass the biggest collection of broken English known to man and be on the phone 24/7 (which sooner or later will lead to an even smoother solution as there'll be no time left to build any sites anyways).

    IF I'd do this, I'd hire Calin to take the calls and respond to the emails. His instructions: "Give them a hard time and make sure they're honest."

    Hahaha, i'd literally pay to watch that :D

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • chadsixchadsix Member, Patron Provider
    1. That's not what E2EE is. TLS is only transport level encryption (literally stands for Transport Layer Securit), E2EE is more than just that.

    This depends on the ownership and control of a server and context. In this case, we're referring to end to end meaning 'server <-> client' wherein Cloudflare is not.

    1. What makes an "international employee" somehow less trustworthy than a "domestic" one? Are people from the US somehow more trustworthy?

    The point is that you don't know these people.

    Also your blog post says that you offer a SNI proxy which doesn't decrypt -- but nothing prevents you from decrypting. You could easily issue a LE cert because your customers still need to point DNS records at you. If your problem is that the MITM proxy can't be trusted then neither can an SNI proxy.

    You can monitor SSL certificate issuance, but I agree with this. SSL in and of itself is really broken generally.

    I'm not saying that there aren't privacy problems with CF, but I think the blog post you linked is just factually dubious.

    I hope this clarifies the points more clearly. The real point, though, is that Cloudflare is a massive MITM. Take for example ChatGPT -- it's going through Cloudflare.

    Thanked by 1david
  • Cloudflare blocks or challenges bad requests from hitting my website. #cloudflare

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • emghemgh Member, Megathread Squad

    @blackwebhosting said:
    Cloudflare blocks or challenges bad requests from hitting my website. #cloudflare

    This ain’t twitter and those ain’t my nameservers

  • @chadsix said:
    Cloudflare is a massive MITM

    Yeah, that's actually a way bigger topic than their filters. Well, this and the fact that they create a huge single point of failure.

    Thanked by 1tentor
  • bdspicebdspice Member

    cloudflare dont work with cpanel roundcube. it will work until once get not working.

  • APIAPI Member

    @emgh said:

    @totally_not_banned said:

    @emgh said:

    Well, they could try. Probably won't fix the issue though.

    Yeah, pretty unlikely. My browser switches pretty evenly between claiming to be FF on Linux, Windows or MacOS. Doesn't really make any noticeable difference. Like i've said, claiming to be a wrong type of browser makes Cloudflare choke during captchas but as long as i report as some kind of Firefox they are fine with it.

    It's honestly surprising to me how people that I bet come from a technical background and are relatively smart don't get the concept of false positives and that's it okay so long as it's profitable.

    Feels like I've mentioned several times now that the people developing these systems are well aware that there will be false positives, and so long as the positives outweigh the negatives, it's worth it, yet again and again these types of comments come:

    @tentor said: So any Linux user using Firefox is an automated traffic in your opinion?

    I don't know if I'm explaining it in a weird way, but to me it dosen't seem that complicated.

    Risk/Safety software engineer here. @emgh is exactly right. When you're working with huge systems (in my case, one of the top dating apps) I can assure you those decisions ARE taken. I'm the circumstances, it's better to block 99.999% of the bad traffic even if it means 0.001% of the traffic is going to be a false positive.

    It's not that anyone's after you. It's just that it's just way too complicated and expensive to accommodate you, given the very few amount of people that are using your settings.

    Thanked by 1emgh
  • daviddavid Member

    There are a lot of complaints about cloudflare. I don't think the false positive rate is 0.001%. It's likely much, much higher. And sometimes, they go after everyone. There is apparently some setting where everyone has to pass through the gauntlet.

    Like I said before:

    @david said: I think it's a situation where both site admins and visitors have been lulled into a sense that what Cloudflare is doing is normal and necessary. But there are other CDN's and DDoS protection services, and I'm not seeing the same sort of thing from anyone else, except maybe google (which is a whole other thing).

    There are other CDN's and DDoS protection services that don't have nearly as many problems as Cloudflare. Even google is an order of magnitude better, though when google sinks their teeth in, they don't let go.

    Thanked by 1sasslik
  • @Nanja said:
    Does anyone have experience using cloudflare tunnels free tier?

    I am thinking of buying a home server and sending everything through the tunnel. I know the home server IP will be masked and all ports are protected.

    What are the limitations though? I feel like there would be a bandwidth cap or something, but I can't find information. Also, if I send a massive file through tunnel and person downloads it... There has to be a file size restriction or something.

    I know I could buy a small VPS and put a VPN, but I think cloudflare protection will be better.

    I'm using roughly ~2TB monthly traffic from free tier tunnel and it's been fine. my file transfers are always chunked at 100mb. further read:

    https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/130szje/has_cloudflare_recently_changed_their_tos_re_use/
    https://blog.cloudflare.com/updated-tos/

    I'd say just use it to figure out the limit, they're giving warnings depends on your account / as they like it. your first slap in the wrist is with cloudflare r2 offering, if you don't want it then reduce your usage to not go over the usage in that month.

    Thanked by 1Nanja
  • recaptcha is way harder than hcaptcha imo

    Thanked by 1tentor
  • vpn2024vpn2024 Member

    Are you saying that if you fetched a 100MB file via Cloudflare even if it knowns the Content-Length (sent by origin perhaps) or the object store metadata provides, it still uses http-chunked?

  • I use a captcha solver browser addon, but it cannot get past the new cloudflare "just click it"-captcha. It just locks me out. What even is the point of making an unsolvable captcha?

  • @gartenzaun said:
    I use a captcha solver browser addon, but it cannot get past the new cloudflare "just click it"-captcha. It just locks me out. What even is the point of making an unsolvable captcha?

    You mean a captcha that's not solvable by a machine, and can tell humans and computers apart?

    I would call that a working captcha. :)

    Thanked by 2emgh beanman109
  • kevindskevinds Member, LIR

    @gartenzaun said:
    What even is the point of making an unsolvable captcha?

    It sounds solvable..?

  • @ColderCoder said:
    recaptcha is way harder annoying than hcaptcha imo

    I agree. Hates that fire hydrants

  • The decision to render a cloudflare captcha page or not is mainly based on your IP (residential IP vs commercial), and JA4 fingerprint of your SSL client (browser).

    Once cloudflare captcha page is rendered, it uses further browser information and cookies to decide if an interactive challenge should be used.

  • gartenzaungartenzaun Member
    edited October 2024

    @aj_potc said: You mean a captcha that's not solvable by a machine, and can tell humans and computers apart?

    I would call that a working captcha. :)

    What? It obviously doesn't work, if it locks me out. I am not a machine.. I think.

    I meant that I cannot hand-solve it either. The manual click does not work. I am just stuck.

  • Thanked by 2emgh suyadi92
  • aj_potcaj_potc Member
    edited October 2024

    @gartenzaun said:

    @aj_potc said: You mean a captcha that's not solvable by a machine, and can tell humans and computers apart?

    I would call that a working captcha. :)

    What? It obviously doesn't work, if it locks me out. I am not a machine.. I think.

    You wrote that you couldn't get in using a captcha solver browser plugin. To me, that says you were trying to use a machine to get around a captcha. I admit I've never used such a tool, so I don't know what else it could mean.

    I meant that I cannot hand-solve it either. The manual click does not work.

    Before or after you try to use the automated, non-human method?

  • If you think CloudFlare panel login captcha check button is bad, then you need to see GitHub puzzles of torture, 20-25 missing piece challenges in a row and then you fail.

  • tentortentor Member, Host Rep

    @Janevski said: GitHub puzzles of torture

    Micro$oft

  • kevindskevinds Member, LIR

    @Janevski said:
    If you think CloudFlare panel login captcha check button is bad, then you need to see GitHub puzzles of torture, 20-25 missing piece challenges in a row and then you fail.

    I hated the 'rotate the animal' a lot more.. Made me feel special because I could rarely pass them... Between not telling which angle was correct or doing them too fast or too slow.

Sign In or Register to comment.