Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Most of these ‘attacks’ are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN. Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.
For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.
Cloudflare makes the website feel dirty, but it’ll protect the site until a better option is found.
Can you elaborate what you mean by this? Lots of sites use cloudflair and most users of those sites would never even know. What makes it dirty?
Because cloudflare is literally everywhere. One service acting as middle man for so many sites means they can do a lot of stuff. It’s the same reason people want to decentralise services, we dont want a central authority.
Edit: I personally have dont care much if there is cloudflare, Im just giving a possible reason cloudflare might be bad.
Cloudflare is literally helping the internet to federate on a tech level. All our services like youtube Videos, instagram content, reddit and other fast access content are quick and smooth bc Cloudflare and similar companies temporarily store data at locations that are close to you.
Without them all your data would be stored in few central locations. Not only would it be slow as fuck, they would also be more vulnerable.
Also Cloudflares other main products are cyber security. Which is good for smaller federated entities for obvious reasons.
Its not. I explained in the below comment why Cloudflare and others like them helps you decentralise. And other benefits.
It was an intentionally loaded question for the commentor I was replying to. I’ve used cloudflair services many times because they provide outstanding service…they are a company who consciously decided they wanted to excel in just a few things, they got very good at those few things, and they are still very good at those few things.
I speculate people are kneejerking against the notion of “putting all your eggs in one basket”, whithout stopping to think that cloudflair’s entire service offering is about spreading your eggs out across multiple baskets. And it’s not like you’re stuck with them - companies can and do partner with multiple cdn’s all the time to diversify their peering arrangements.
Cloudflare definitely has a great service and the positives probably overweight the negatives in this situation. But the potential for an attack from within cloudflare itself via trackers or a probably very low chance of a letter man being in the middle can feel a little tense. It boils down to not trusting the company. I especially do not like those outages, captchas, cookies and a centralized web. Cloudflare will help Lemmy stay on top of everything and keep stability though.
Maybe being addicted to uBlock having only green and no detections makes me worried. It’s like a little bit of dirt on the floor.