That’s been my pet theory from day 1, and not because of DDoS. Simply because they are the SSL terminator for most of the internet and can see anything going on in cleartext (and I’ve seen them protecting some shady stuff)
I recall a PRISM slide showing the diagram of Google and the public internet, with a big arrow on GFE saying, quote, “SSL added and removed here! :-)”
If NSA aren’t installed at Cloudflare, I wonder what they are even doing.
It's within the realm of possibility that NSA is collecting data with Cloudflare's consent. It seems unlikely that Cloudflare would jeopardize their entire business model over it. Unlike other companies in the leaked NSA slides that participated in PRISM, Cloudflare would face a near-total loss of customers. Their entire value proposition is being an unobtrusive traffic intermediary.
Within the realm of possibility? Let's be honest, if you are a top NSA executive and you couldn't find a way to get your hands on Cloudflare's private keys (bribing or threatening the right person), you are not getting your Christmas bonus.
It is of course inconceivable that the NSA do not have the private keys for dozens of browser trusted certificate authorities
That nonetheless doesn't help them unless they are doing active MITM. In order to do that they'd have to have at least some physical presence at Cloudflare or on the path to Cloudflare.
> Unlike other companies in the leaked NSA slides that participated in PRISM, Cloudflare would face a near-total loss of customers
People didn’t care when they learned about PRISM, why would they care now when it’s a known fact? The sane stance would be to assume Cloudflare is in cahoots with NSA.
All the companies involved in PRISM made public statements saying they ceased participation. Google undertook a costly initiative to add encrypted connections over their datacenter circuits. The NSA leaks were a forcing function that led to a massive uptake of encryption. Up until that point it was common for websites to support only HTTP.
The NSA leaks dominated news cycles for the entirety of 2013.
Well, we kind of can, given that "SSL added and removed here :-)" was a pretty explicit workaround to the issue of encrypted communications in Google's infrastructure, just not between sites (IIRC).
Either way, if they were directly colluding with Google, they would have had a much simpler time siphoning off that data.
Sorry for necro-replying, but assuming you're talking about cloudflare they already do.
They took down KF (which is hosted in the US, so seemingly to be legal), but have always allowed everything from sites dedicated to livestreaming animal abuse to ISIS-affiliates hosting beheading videos (both which AFAIK is illegal).
