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DDoS Attacks Will Now Be 'Something You Only Read About In The History Books', Says Cloudflare CEO (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the big-promises dept.

Louise Matsakis, writing for Motherboard: Cloudflare, a major internet security firm, is on a mission to render distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks useless. The company announced Monday that every customer -- including those who only use its free services -- will receive a new feature called Unmetered Mitigation, which protects against every DDoS attack, regardless of its size. Cloudflare believes the move is set to level the internet security playing field: Now every website will be able to fight back against DDoS attacks for free. "The standard practice in the industry for some time has been to charge more if you come under attack," Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, told me on a phone call last week. Firms often "fire you as a customer if you're not sort of paying enough and you get a large attack," he explained. "That's kind of gross."

15 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Hubris by DaMattster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's just Hubris and I am going to store this little nugget for when Cloudflare does get DDoS'd. Then I will laugh.

    1. Re:Hubris by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Matthew Prince should have a chat with Bill Gates about how well his 2004 prediction at Davos that spam will be a solved problem within two years worked out.

      Also from that link:

      [Gates] hailed search technology firm Google as a "great company"; its approach reminded him of Microsoft 20 years ago. But he also predicted that Microsoft search technology would soon outpace that of its rival.

      I suspect Prince's powers of prognostication are no better than Gates'.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    2. Re:Hubris by Gussington · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's just Hubris and I am going to store this little nugget for when Cloudflare does get DDoS'd. Then I will laugh.

      That's just Hubris and I am going to store this little nugget for when Cloudflare doesn't get DDoS'd. Then I will laugh.

    3. Re:Hubris by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The only way this works (financially) is if they can publicize well enough, "DDOS against Cloudflare won't work, they have too much bandwidth," and people stop trying.

      IF they are successful in holding off a few well-publicized DDOS attempts, then their strategy will probably work.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:Hubris by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Gmail launched a few months after Gates's prediction, and within a couple years had pretty much solved the unsolicited spam problem by monitoring the flow of mass emails and crowdsourcing spam identification to users. Other email providers and spam filters followed suit. A 'solved problem' doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist anymore, it means that there are now solutions to said problem.

      And re: search, you can't really fault him for supporting his own company.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    5. Re:Hubris by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The only way this works (financially) is if they can publicize well enough, "DDOS against Cloudflare won't work, they have too much bandwidth," and people stop trying.

      No, that's not enough. They either also have to become the host to every website on the planet, or convince everyone who would attempt a DDoS that they are and thus shouldn't bother trying.

      That's what ""something you only read about in the history books" means. It never happens.

      Of course, to be financially beneficial to Cloudflare, all it takes is this, from TFA: "Cloudflare has even protected the websites of DDoS perpetrators, while selling services to mitigate them." Yes, when you sell mitigation services against attacks from people you also sell network services to, it is a win-win for you. Not so much for anyone else.

      What's scary is that this guy keeps talking about "Now every website will be able to fight back against DDoS attacks for free." Fighting back is not the same as mitigating damage from.

    6. Re:Hubris by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      And yet the spammers keep spamming. If spam was truly a solved problem, then there would be no money in it for them and they'd give up and move onto something else (actually some have - they've moved onto spam forums like Facebook and Twitter instead, or other aspects of cybercrime). Spam might *effectively* be a "solved" problem for you, and me for that matter, but it's clearly not a solved problem in the more general sense.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  2. "Hold my beer." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Hold my beer." -- Internet

  3. History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I guess we'll read about the concept of a decentralized world wide web in history books too then.

  4. What about Slashdotting protection? by klashn · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will a site be protected from being slashdotted? It's kind of a DDoS

  5. A few possible problems: by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. They just threw down the 'digital gauntlet' at the feet of every hacker/hacker collective/black hat/white hat/whoever; they've more or less declared Open Season on themselves.
    1A. They might know damned well they're doing this -- and want their own systems and methods tested in live-fire scenarios.
    2. On the surface (allowing for some assumptions, for the sake of argument) this sounds great; but the 'hey, wait a minute..' moment soon comes, and you realize that they're setting themselves up as the Gatekeepers for the Internet; the digital Heimdall standing guard at the Rainbow Bridge to the Internet. That's a lot of power for one company to have, and with that power comes a lot of responsibility -- and potential for abuse.
    3. DDoS attacks are just one form of digital treachery that is committed on the Internet; what about everything else?

    1. Re:A few possible problems: by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

      CloudFlare was handling roughly 10% of all web traffic a year and a half ago, presumably it's higher now. They're already one of the gatekeepers.

    2. Re:A few possible problems: by guruevi · · Score: 4, Informative

      Cloudflare is big, it has hosting in a lot of major ISP's network. What Cloudflare does is when it notices a DDoS attack from a particular segment, it shifts the traffic to the closest originating ISP and then it only impacts the ISP which at that point is going to be motivated to getting the 'bad traffic' off their network whether that is by pressuring smaller ISP's or simply cutting them off.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  6. Re:Nice marketing-lie by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    CloudFlare has several times handled DDoS attacks that were then the largest attacks recorded, including a 400Gbps in 2014 and a 600Gbps in 2016. Sometimes these are simple network traffic requests, sometimes these are masquerading as legitimate traffic. In the latter case, you'll see an interstitial page that appears to validate your browser using some sort of javascript. In either case, they certainly have a proven track record of handling very large attacks.

  7. Re:Nice marketing-lie by stephanruby · · Score: 2

    you'll see an interstitial page that appears to validate your browser using some sort of javascript.

    How do you move past that interstitial page? I'm not a bot, I swear. I just use an adblocker. And clicking on the link they tell me to click on just brings me back to the same page.

    To me, CloudFlare has been synonymous with 404 and their CEO seems to be as delusional as Donald Trump. Instead of admitting that they can't follow through on their own marketing, they just double down on the lie.