Cloudflare, dirty networks and politricks

Fri Jul 29 12:08:05 UTC 2016

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 11:30:12PM +0000, Donn Lasher via NANOG wrote:
> If we want to be accurate about it, Cloudflare doesn???t host the DDoS,
> they protect the website of seller of the product. We shouldn???t be
> de-peering Cloud Flare over sites they protect any more than we would
> de-peer GoDaddy over sites they host, some of which, no doubt, sell
> gray/black market/illegal items/services.

This strategy fails for two reasons.

First, nobody gets a pass.  Anybody providing services to abusers
needs to cut them off, whether it's a registrar, a web host, an email
provider, a DNS provider, or anything else.  Nobody gets to shrug it
off with "Well, but..."

Second, nobody *can* get a pass, because the people behind these operations
have long since learned to distribute their assets widely -- in an attempt
to avoid exactly the actions in the first point.  And you know what?
It works.  "We're just hosting their email", says X, and "We're just
hosting their DNS", says Y, and "We're just hosting their web site",
says Z, and none of them do anything, and nothing gets done. 

The only way to make action against them effective is to do it broadly,
do it swiftly, and do it permanently.

---rsk