[rdtsc]

> No, it means Cloudflare was helping keep his website up, in a neutral manner.

I think it's more subtle than that. It was keeping his website up to make a profit. It benefits Cloudflare to have powerful, well run bot networks out there ready take out any site which do not have Cloudflare's protection.

Yeah, it's a neutral manner on one level, but at a higher level it's bit more nuanced.

[EdwardDiego]

I feel like that's assuming a lot about Cloudflare - what evidence is there of such Machiavellian maneuovres on their behalf?

Would it be impossible to run DDoS as a service for profit without Cloudflare? People were doing fine at just that before Cloudflare ever existed.

[mike_d]

> Would it be impossible to run DDoS as a service for profit without Cloudflare?

Quite frankly, yes. Before CloudFlare won the race to the bottom, you'd have to front thousands of dollars per month for bulletproof DDoS shielded hosting to get started.

There is a finite amount of DDoS-for-hire business that used to keep itself in check because they were constantly throwing attacks at each other raising everyone's "cost of goods sold" so to speak. By protecting these providers shops and ignoring abuse complaints CloudFlare helps more of them stay in business increasing the frequency and size of attacks needing to be mitigated.

I do not believe CloudFlare really thought this out. I believe it was a happy accident.

[prvit]

> Before CloudFlare won the race to the bottom, you'd have to front thousands of dollars per month for bulletproof DDoS shielded hosting to get started.

Before Cloudflare there was decent DDoS protected hosting available for low hundreds of dollars per month, you didn’t have to pay prolexic.

[EdwardDiego]

Cheers :) Happy accident makes a lot more sense than "deliberate policy".