[xorcist]

It's been a well known story around Cloudflare from the beginning that they protect booters and other cybercrime actors just like any other (paying or non-paying) customer.

If you report the DDoS-for-hire actors that offer their services on forums where such things are offered openly, they reply with a template that freely interpreted say something along the lines that they can do nothing and who is a crimininal is .. like, just your opinion, man (checks notes) they say here they are a legit load tester operation, so nothing really we can do.

You can say they entered the scene because DDoS exploded in popularity, but you could just as easily make the argument it was the other way around. Make of that what you will but they sure made a lot of money from the same booters they protect their customers from.