Ask HN: Does Cloudflare block HN feedback when you have code blocks in a reply?

Phil Tadros · January 13, 2024

2024-01-13 18:30:50

Probably not related, but I’ve been getting lots of throttling-like huge page load delays on HN the last couple days, only when logged in.

Any idea whether that’s just an overloaded application server, or something Cloudflare is doing?

That’s often the case with HN I think from past experience when there are large threads on HN, and dang has in the past said that’s due to the application server.

Any code including netcat (for it’s tendency to be used in reverse shells) or SQL (for it’s tendency to be used in SQL injections) tends to be blocked across the entire cloudflare-net these days.

It’s safe to assume that the NSA have the ability to intercept all non-US originated traffic that passes through Cloudflare. Which is convenient given Cloudflare allows its services to be used by some questionable entities. You’re witnessing the modern Prism.

It’s a TLS termination proxy that decrypt and re-encrypt your TLS packet. Technically Cloudflare can read anything unless you add your own crypt layer on top of TLS.

I’m pretty sure the default is they can see all the cleartext, since their product is based on TLS interception, for example to evaluate page rules.

This is also how they insert extra headers in both the request and response.