More NPM packages on Cloudflare Workers: Combining polyfills and native code to support Node.js APIs
Today, we are excited to announce a preview of improved Node.js compatibility for Workers and Pages. Broader compatibility lets you use more NPM packages and take advantage of the JavaScript ecosystem when writing your Workers.
Our newest version of Node.js compatibility combines the best features of our previous efforts. Cloudflare Workers have supported Node.js in some form for quite a while. We first announced polyfill support in 2021, and later built-in support for parts of the Node.js API that has expanded over time.
The latest changes make it even better:
You can use far more NPM packages on Workers.
You can use packages that do not use the
node: prefix to import Node.js APIsYou can use more Node.js APIs on Workers, including most methods on
async_hooks,buffer,dns,os, andevents. Many more, such asfsorprocessare importable with mocked methods.
To give it a try, add the following flag to wrangler.toml, and deploy your Worker with Wrangler:
compatibility_flags = ["nodejs_compat_v2"]
Packages that could not be imported with nodejs_compat, even as a dependency of another package, will now load. This Continue reading
Bringing insights into TCP resets and timeouts to Cloudflare Radar
Cloudflare handles over 60 million HTTP requests per second globally, with approximately 70% received over TCP connections (the remaining are QUIC/UDP). Ideally, every new TCP connection to Cloudflare would carry at least one request that results in a successful data exchange, but that is far from the truth. In reality, we find that, globally, approximately 20% of new TCP connections to Cloudflare’s servers time out or are closed with a TCP “abort” message either before any request can be completed or immediately after an initial request.
This post explores those connections that, for various reasons, appear to our servers to have been halted unexpectedly before any useful data exchange occurs. Our work reveals that while connections are normally ended by clients, they can also be closed due to third-party interference. Today we’re excited to launch a new dashboard and API endpoint on Cloudflare Radar that shows a near real-time view of TCP connections to Cloudflare’s network that terminate within the first 10 ingress packets due to resets or timeouts, which we’ll refer to as anomalous TCP connections in this post. Analyzing this anomalous behavior provides insights into scanning, connection tampering, DoS attacks, connectivity issues, and other behaviors.
A global assessment of third-party connection tampering
Have you ever made a phone call, only to have the call cut as soon as it is answered, with no obvious reason or explanation? This analogy is the starting point for understanding connection tampering on the Internet and its impact.
We have found that 20 percent of all Internet connections are abruptly closed before any useful data can be exchanged. Essentially, every fifth call is cut before being used. As with a phone call, it can be challenging for one or both parties to know what happened. Was it a faulty connection? Did the person on the other end of the line hang up? Did a third party intervene to stop the call?
On the Internet, Cloudflare is in a unique position to help figure out when a third party may have played a role. Our global network allows us to identify patterns that suggest that an external party may have intentionally tampered with a connection to prevent content from being accessed. Although they are often hard to decipher, the ways connections are abruptly closed give clues to what might have happened. Sources of tampering generally do not try to hide their actions, which leaves hints of Continue reading
Making progress on routing security: the new White House roadmap
The Internet can feel like magic. When you load a webpage in your browser, many simultaneous requests for data fly back and forth to remote servers. Then, often in less than one second, a website appears. Many people know that DNS is used to look up a hostname, and resolve it to an IP address, but fewer understand how data flows from your home network to the network that controls the IP address of the web server.
The Internet is an interconnected network of networks, operated by thousands of independent entities. To allow these networks to communicate with each other, in 1989, on the back of two napkins, three network engineers devised the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). It allows these independent networks to signal directions for IP prefixes they own, or that are reachable through their network. At that time, Internet security wasn’t a big deal — SSL, initially developed to secure websites, wasn’t developed until 1995, six years later. So BGP wasn’t originally built with security in mind, but over time, security and availability concerns have emerged.
Today, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director issued the Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security, and Continue reading
Exploring Internet and security trends during the 2024 U.S. Democratic National Convention
The 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) wrapped up on Thursday, August 22, in Chicago, Illinois. Since our blog post about Internet trends during the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on June 27, the presidential race has fundamentally changed. We experienced the attempted assassination of Trump, the Republican National Convention (RNC), Biden’s late July withdrawal from the race, and Vice President Kamala Harris being selected as the Democratic nominee and participating in her party’s convention this week. Here, we’ll examine trends more focused on DNS traffic to news and candidate-related sites, cyberattacks targeting politically-related organizations, and spam and malicious emails mentioning the candidates’ names.
Over 60 more national elections are scheduled to take place across the world this year, and we have been monitoring them as they occur. Our goal is to provide a neutral analysis of their impact on Internet behavior, which often mirrors human activities. Significant events, such as the total eclipse in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and the Paris 2024 Olympics, have had an impact on Internet traffic. Our ongoing election report on Cloudflare Radar includes updates from recent elections in the European Union, France, Continue reading
Go wild: Wildcard support in Rules and a new open-source wildcard crate
Back in 2012, we introduced Page Rules, a pioneering feature that gave Cloudflare users unprecedented control over how their web traffic was managed. At the time, this was a significant leap forward, enabling users to define patterns for specific URLs and adjust Cloudflare features on a page-by-page basis. The ability to apply such precise configurations through a simple, user-friendly interface was a major advancement, establishing Page Rules as a cornerstone of our platform.
Page Rules allowed users to implement a variety of actions, including redirects, which automatically send visitors from one URL to another. Redirects are crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience on the Internet, whether it's guiding users from outdated links to new content or managing traffic during site migrations.
As the Internet has evolved, so too have the needs of our users. The demand for greater flexibility, higher performance, and more advanced capabilities led to the development of the Ruleset Engine, a powerful framework designed to handle complex rule evaluations with unmatched speed and precision.
In September 2022, we announced and released Single Redirects as a modern replacement for the URL Forwarding feature of Page Rules. Built on top of the Ruleset Engine, this Continue reading
NIST’s first post-quantum standards
On August 13th, 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first three cryptographic standards designed to resist an attack from quantum computers: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. This announcement marks a significant milestone for ensuring that today’s communications remain secure in a future world where large-scale quantum computers are a reality.
In this blog post, we briefly discuss the significance of NIST’s recent announcement, how we expect the ecosystem to evolve given these new standards, and the next steps we are taking. For a deeper dive, see our March 2024 blog post.
Why are quantum computers a threat?
Cryptography is a fundamental aspect of modern technology, securing everything from online communications to financial transactions. For instance, when visiting this blog, your web browser used cryptography to establish a secure communication channel to Cloudflare’s server to ensure that you’re really talking to Cloudflare (and not an impersonator), and that the conversation remains private from eavesdroppers.
Much of the cryptography in widespread use today is based on mathematical puzzles (like factoring very large numbers) which are computationally out of reach for classical (non-quantum) computers. We could likely continue to use traditional cryptography for decades to Continue reading
NIST’s first post-quantum standards
On August 13th, 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first three cryptographic standards designed to resist an attack from quantum computers: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. This announcement marks a significant milestone for ensuring that today’s communications remain secure in a future world where large-scale quantum computers are a reality.
In this blog post, we briefly discuss the significance of NIST’s recent announcement, how we expect the ecosystem to evolve given these new standards, and the next steps we are taking. For a deeper dive, see our March 2024 blog post.
Why are quantum computers a threat?
Cryptography is a fundamental aspect of modern technology, securing everything from online communications to financial transactions. For instance, when visiting this blog, your web browser used cryptography to establish a secure communication channel to Cloudflare’s server to ensure that you’re really talking to Cloudflare (and not an impersonator), and that the conversation remains private from eavesdroppers.
Much of the cryptography in widespread use today is based on mathematical puzzles (like factoring very large numbers) which are computationally out of reach for classical (non-quantum) computers. We could likely continue to use traditional cryptography for decades to Continue reading
Summer 2024 weather report: Cloudflare with a chance of Intern-ets
During the summer of 2024, Cloudflare welcomed approximately 60 Intern-ets from all around the globe on a mission to #HelpBuildABetterInternet. Over the course of their internships, our wonderful interns tackled real-world challenges from different teams all over the company and contributed to cutting-edge projects. As returning interns, we – Shaheen, Aaron, and Jada – would like to show off the great work our cohort has done and experiences we’ve had throughout our time here.
Austin Interns after volunteering at the Central Texas Food Bank.
Putting the SHIP in internSHIP
Cloudflare interns take pride in driving high-impact initiatives, playing a vital role in advancing Cloudflare's mission. With our diverse roles and projects this summer, we'd love to highlight some of the exciting work we've been involved in:
Rahul, a Software Engineer intern, built a system to autograde intern application assignments for future students looking to join Cloudflare. It was built entirely on the Cloudflare Developer Platform, using Cloudflare Access, Browser Rendering, D1, Durable Objects, R2, and Workers!
Jessica, a Software Engineer intern, created a new threads api for the Workers AI team that automatically recalls past messages when running inference, helping developers to Continue reading
Summer 2024 weather report: Cloudflare with a chance of Intern-ets
During the summer of 2024, Cloudflare welcomed approximately 60 Intern-ets from all around the globe on a mission to #HelpBuildABetterInternet. Over the course of their internships, our wonderful interns tackled real-world challenges from different teams all over the company and contributed to cutting-edge projects. As returning interns, we – Shaheen, Aaron, and Jada – would like to show off the great work our cohort has done and experiences we’ve had throughout our time here.
Putting the SHIP in internSHIP
Cloudflare interns take pride in driving high-impact initiatives, playing a vital role in advancing Cloudflare's mission. With our diverse roles and projects this summer, we'd love to highlight some of the exciting work we've been involved in:
Rahul, a Software Engineer intern, built a system to autograde intern application assignments for future students looking to join Cloudflare. It was built entirely on the Cloudflare Developer Platform, using Cloudflare Access, Browser Rendering, D1, Durable Objects, R2, and Workers!
Jessica, a Software Engineer intern, created a new threads api for the Workers AI team that automatically recalls past messages when running inference, helping developers to Continue reading
A wild week in phishing, and what it means for you
Being a bad guy on the Internet is a really good business. In more than 90% of cybersecurity incidents, phishing is the root cause of the attack, and during this third week of August phishing attacks were reported against the U.S. elections, in the geopolitical conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, and to cause $60M in corporate losses.
You might think that after 30 years of email being the top vector for attack and risk we are helpless to do anything about it, but that would be giving too much credit to bad actors, and a misunderstanding of how defenders focused on detections can take control and win.
Phishing isn’t about email exclusively, or any specific protocol for that matter. Simply put, it is an attempt to get a person, like you or me, to take an action that unwittingly leads to damages. These attacks work because they appear to be authentic, visually or organizationally, such as pretending to be the CEO or CFO of your company, and when you break it down they are three main attack vectors that Cloudflare has seen most impactful from the bad emails we protect our customers Continue reading
A wild week in phishing, and what it means for you
This post is also available in 한국어, 日本語, 简体中文, 繁體中文, Français, Deutsch and Español.
Being a bad guy on the Internet is a really good business. In more than 90% of cybersecurity incidents, phishing is the root cause of the attack, and during this third week of August phishing attacks were reported against the U.S. elections, in the geopolitical conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, and to cause $60M in corporate losses.
You might think that after 30 years of email being the top vector for attack and risk we are helpless to do anything about it, but that would be giving too much credit to bad actors, and a misunderstanding of how defenders focused on detections can take control and win.
Phishing isn’t about email exclusively, or any specific protocol for that matter. Simply put, it is an attempt to get a person, like you or me, to take an action that unwittingly leads to damages. These attacks work because they appear to be authentic, visually or organizationally, such as pretending to be the CEO or CFO of your company, and when you break it down they are three Continue reading
Introducing high-definition portrait video support for Cloudflare Stream
Cloudflare Stream is an end-to-end solution for video encoding, storage, delivery, and playback. Our focus has always been on simplifying all aspects of video for developers. This goal continues to motivate us as we introduce first-class portrait (vertical) video support today. Newly uploaded or ingested portrait videos will now automatically be processed in full HD quality.
Why portrait video
In the past few years, the popularity of portrait video has exploded, motivated by short-form video content applications such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts. However, Cloudflare customers have been confused as to why their portrait videos appear to be lower quality when viewed on portrait-first devices such as smartphones. This is because our video encoding pipeline previously did not support high-quality portrait videos, leading them to be grainy and lower quality. This pain point has now been addressed with the introduction of high-definition portrait video.
The current stream pipeline
When you upload a video to Stream, it is first encoded into several different “renditions” (sizes or resolutions) before delivery. This is done in order to enable playback in a wide variety of network conditions, as well as to standardize the way a video is experienced. By using these adaptive Continue reading
Simplify cloud routing and object storage configurations with Cloud Connector
As part of Cloudflare's mission to help build a better Internet, we’re continuously integrating with other networks and service providers, ensuring ease of use for anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Today, we’re excited to announce Cloud Connector – a brand-new way to put Cloudflare in front of popular public cloud services, protecting your assets, accelerating applications, and routing your traffic between multiple cloud providers seamlessly.
Cloud Connector is a natural extension of Cloudflare's Connectivity Cloud, which aims to simplify and secure the complex web of connections across today’s enterprises. Imagine Origin Rules, but managed by Cloudflare, available for all plans, created with just a few clicks, and working out of the box without the need for additional rules. It allows you to route traffic to different public clouds without complicated workarounds. This means you can now direct specific requests to AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, or our own R2, even if these services are not set as the DNS target for your hostname.
Whether you’re an e-commerce site looking to route image traffic to the best-performing cloud storage for faster load times, a media company distributing video content efficiently across various cloud providers, or Continue reading
Introducing high-definition portrait video support for Cloudflare Stream
Cloudflare Stream is an end-to-end solution for video encoding, storage, delivery, and playback. Our focus has always been on simplifying all aspects of video for developers. This goal continues to motivate us as we introduce first-class portrait (vertical) video support today. Newly uploaded or ingested portrait videos will now automatically be processed in full HD quality.
Why portrait video
In the past few years, the popularity of portrait video has exploded, motivated by short-form video content applications such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts. However, Cloudflare customers have been confused as to why their portrait videos appear to be lower quality when viewed on portrait-first devices such as smartphones. This is because our video encoding pipeline previously did not support high-quality portrait videos, leading them to be grainy and lower quality. This pain point has now been addressed with the introduction of high-definition portrait video.
The current stream pipeline
When you upload a video to Stream, it is first encoded into several different “renditions” (sizes or resolutions) before delivery. This is done in order to enable playback in a wide variety of network conditions, as well as to standardize the way a video is experienced. By using these adaptive bitrate Continue reading
Simplify cloud routing and object storage configurations with Cloud Connector
Introduction
As part of Cloudflare's mission to help build a better Internet, we’re continuously integrating with other networks and service providers, ensuring ease of use for anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Today, we’re excited to announce Cloud Connector – a brand-new way to put Cloudflare in front of popular public cloud services, protecting your assets, accelerating applications, and routing your traffic between multiple cloud providers seamlessly.
Cloud Connector is a natural extension of Cloudflare's Connectivity Cloud, which aims to simplify and secure the complex web of connections across today’s enterprises. Imagine Origin Rules, but managed by Cloudflare, available for all plans, created with just a few clicks, and working out of the box without the need for additional rules. It allows you to route traffic to different public clouds without complicated workarounds. This means you can now direct specific requests to AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, or our own R2, even if these services are not set as the DNS target for your hostname.
Whether you’re an e-commerce site looking to route image traffic to the best-performing cloud storage for faster load times, a media company distributing video content efficiently across various cloud providers, or Continue reading
Paris 2024 Olympics recap: Internet trends, cyber threats, and popular moments
The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics wrapped up on August 11, 2024, with the Olympic flag being lowered in the Stade de France after 16 days of competitions. With 329 events across 32 sports, over 10,000 athletes from 204 nations participated in the pursuit of medals and glory, creating some viral online moments along the way. In this post, we turn our attention to the closing ceremony, the impact of various Olympic moments on Internet traffic, and the cyber attacks faced by sponsors. We also examine email trends related to the Olympics, including mentions of Simone Biles, Snoop Dogg, and Imane Khelif.
Cloudflare has a global presence with data centers in over 330 cities, supporting millions of customers with different tools and products, which provides a global view of what’s happening on the Internet. This is helpful for improving security, privacy, efficiency, and speed, but also for observing Internet disruptions and traffic trends.
In our previous blog post about the opening ceremony and the early days of the event, we showed how France was impacted by the Olympics, with clear drops in traffic during the main events. The opening ceremony caused the most significant drop—traffic decreased by as much as 20% Continue reading
Paris 2024 Olympics recap: Internet trends, cyber threats, and popular moments
The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics wrapped up on August 11, 2024, with the Olympic flag being lowered in the Stade de France after 16 days of competitions. With 329 events across 32 sports, over 10,000 athletes from 204 nations participated in the pursuit of medals and glory, creating some viral online moments along the way. In this post, we turn our attention to the closing ceremony, the impact of various Olympic moments on Internet traffic, and the cyber attacks faced by sponsors. We also examine email trends related to the Olympics, including mentions of Simone Biles, Snoop Dogg, and Imane Khelif.
Cloudflare has a global presence with data centers in over 330 cities, supporting millions of customers with different tools and products, which provides a global view of what’s happening on the Internet. This is helpful for improving security, privacy, efficiency, and speed, but also for observing Internet disruptions and traffic trends.
In our previous blog post about the opening ceremony and the early days of the event, we showed how France was impacted by the Olympics, with clear drops in traffic during the main events. The opening ceremony caused the most significant drop—traffic decreased by as much as 20% Continue reading
Introducing HTTP request traffic insights on Cloudflare Radar
Historically, traffic graphs on Cloudflare Radar have displayed two metrics: total traffic and HTTP traffic. These graphs show normalized traffic volumes measured in bytes, derived from aggregated NetFlow data. (NetFlow is a protocol used to collect metadata about IP traffic flows traversing network devices.) Today, we’re adding an additional metric that reflects the number of HTTP requests, normalized over the same time period. By comparing bytes with requests, readers can gain additional insights into traffic patterns and user behavior. Below, we review how this new data has been incorporated into Radar, and explore HTTP request traffic in more detail.
Note that while we refer to “HTTP request traffic” in this post and on Radar, the term encompasses requests made in the clear over HTTP and over encrypted connections using HTTPS – the latter accounts for ~95% of all requests to Cloudflare during July 2024.
New and updated graphs
Graphs including HTTP request-based traffic data have been added to the Overview and Traffic sections on Cloudflare Radar. On the Overview page, the “Traffic trends” graph now includes a drop-down selector at the upper right, where you can choose between “Total & HTTP bytes” and “HTTP requests & bytes”. We explore Continue reading
Introducing HTTP request traffic insights on Cloudflare Radar
Historically, traffic graphs on Cloudflare Radar have displayed two metrics: total traffic and HTTP traffic. These graphs show normalized traffic volumes measured in bytes, derived from aggregated NetFlow data. (NetFlow is a protocol used to collect metadata about IP traffic flows traversing network devices.) Today, we’re adding another metric that reflects the number of HTTP requests, normalized over the same time period. By comparing bytes with requests, readers can gain additional insights into traffic patterns and user behavior. Below, we review how this new data has been incorporated into Radar, and explore HTTP request traffic in more detail.
Note that while we refer to “HTTP request traffic” in this post and on Radar, the term encompasses requests made in the clear over HTTP and over encrypted connections using HTTPS – the latter accounts for ~95% of all requests to Cloudflare during July 2024.
New and updated graphs
Graphs including HTTP request-based traffic data have been added to the Overview and Traffic sections on Cloudflare Radar. On the Overview page, the “Traffic trends” graph now includes a drop-down selector at the upper right, where you can choose between “Total & HTTP bytes” and “HTTP requests & bytes”. We explore Continue reading