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Category Archives for "Security"

Enhanced security and simplified controls with automated botnet protection, cipher suite selection, and URL Scanner updates

At Cloudflare, we are constantly innovating and launching new features and capabilities across our product portfolio. Today, we're releasing a number of new features aimed at improving the security tools available to our customers.

Automated security level: Cloudflare’s Security Level setting has been improved and no longer requires manual configuration. By integrating botnet data along with other request rate signals, all customers are protected from confirmed known malicious botnet traffic without any action required.

Cipher suite selection: You now have greater control over encryption settings via the Cloudflare dashboard, including specific cipher suite selection based on our client or compliance requirements.

Improved URL scanner: New features include bulk scanning, similarity search, location picker and more.

These updates are designed to give you more power and flexibility when managing online security, from proactive threat detection to granular control over encryption settings.

Automating Security Level to provide stronger protection for all

Cloudflare’s Security Level feature was designed to protect customer websites from malicious activity.

Available to all Cloudflare customers, including the free tier, it has always had very simple logic: if a connecting client IP address has shown malicious behavior across our network, issue a managed challenge. The system tracks malicious behavior Continue reading

Chaos in Cloudflare’s Lisbon office: securing the Internet with wave motion

Over the years, Cloudflare has gained fame for many things, including our technical blog, but also as a tech company securing the Internet using lava lamps, a story that began as a research/science project almost 10 years ago. In March 2025, we added another layer to its legacy: a "wall of entropy" made of 50 wave machines in constant motion at our Lisbon office, the company's European HQ. 

These wave machines are a new source of entropy, joining lava lamps in San Francisco, suspended rainbows in Austin, and double chaotic pendulums in London. The entropy they generate contributes to securing the Internet through LavaRand.

The new waves wall at Cloudflare’s Lisbon office sits beside the Radar Display of global Internet insights, with the 25th of April Bridge overlooking the Tagus River in the background.

It’s exciting to see waves in Portugal now playing a role in keeping the Internet secure, especially given Portugal’s deep maritime history.

The installation honors Portugal’s passion for the sea and exploration of the unknown, famously beginning over 600 years ago, in 1415, with pioneering vessels like caravels and naus/carracks, precursors to galleons and other ships. Portuguese sea exploration was driven by navigation schools Continue reading

Welcome to Security Week 2025

The layer of security around today’s Internet is essential to safeguarding everything. From the way we shop online, engage with our communities, access critical healthcare resources, sustain the worldwide digital economy, and beyond. Our dependence on the Internet has led to cyber attacks that are bigger and more widespread than ever, worsening the so-called defender’s dilemma: attackers only need to succeed once, while defenders must succeed every time.

In the past year alone, we discovered and mitigated the largest DDoS attack ever recorded in the history of the Internet – three different times – underscoring the rapid and persistent efforts of threat actors. We helped safeguard the largest year of elections across the globe, with more than half the world’s population eligible to vote, all while witnessing geopolitical tensions and war reflected in the digital world.

2025 already promises to follow suit, with cyberattacks estimated to cost the global economy $10.5 trillion in 2025. As the rapid advancement of AI and emerging technologies increases, and as threat actors become more agile and creative, the security landscape continues to drastically evolve. Organizations now face a higher volume of attacks, and an influx of more complex threats that carry real-world consequences, Continue reading

Keep AI interactions secure and risk-free with Guardrails in AI Gateway

The transition of AI from experimental to production is not without its challenges. Developers face the challenge of balancing rapid innovation with the need to protect users and meet strict regulatory requirements. To address this, we are introducing Guardrails in AI Gateway, designed to help you deploy AI safely and confidently. 

Why safety matters

LLMs are inherently non-deterministic, meaning outputs can be unpredictable. Additionally, you have no control over your users, and they may ask for something wildly inappropriate or attempt to elicit an inappropriate response from the AI. Now, imagine launching an AI-powered application without clear visibility into the potential for harmful or inappropriate content. Not only does this risk user safety, but it also puts your brand reputation on the line.

To address the unique security risks specific to AI applications, the OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model (LLM) Applications was created. This is an industry-driven standard that identifies the most critical security vulnerabilities specifically affecting LLM-based and generative AI applications. It’s designed to educate developers, security professionals, and organizations on the unique risks of deploying and managing these systems.

The stakes are even higher with new regulations being introduced:

Helping civil society monitor attacks with the CyberPeaceTracer and Cloudflare Email Security

Civil society organizations have always been at the forefront of humanitarian relief efforts, as well as safeguarding civil and human rights. These organizations play a large role in delivering services during crises, whether it is fighting climate change, support during natural disasters, providing health services to marginalized communities and more. 

What do many of these organizations have in common? Many times, it’s cyber attacks from adversaries looking to steal sensitive information or disrupt their operations. Cloudflare has  seen this firsthand when providing free cybersecurity services to vulnerable groups through programs like Project Galileo, and found that in aggregate, organizations protected under the project experience an average of 95 million attacks per day. While cyber attacks are a problem across all industries in the digital age, civil society organizations are disproportionately targeted, many times due to their advocacy, and because attackers know that they typically operate with limited resources. In most cases, these organizations don’t even know they have been attacked until it is too late. 

Over the last 10 years of Project Galileo, we’ve had the opportunity to work more closely with leading civil society organizations. This has led to a number of exciting new partnerships, Continue reading

QUIC action: patching a broadcast address amplification vulnerability

Cloudflare was recently contacted by a group of anonymous security researchers who discovered a broadcast amplification vulnerability through their QUIC Internet measurement research. Our team collaborated with these researchers through our Public Bug Bounty program, and worked to fully patch a dangerous vulnerability that affected our infrastructure.

Since being notified about the vulnerability, we've implemented a mitigation to help secure our infrastructure. According to our analysis, we have fully patched this vulnerability and the amplification vector no longer exists. 

Summary of the amplification attack

QUIC is an Internet transport protocol that is encrypted by default. It offers equivalent features to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and TLS (Transport Layer Security), while using a shorter handshake sequence that helps reduce connection establishment times. QUIC runs over UDP (User Datagram Protocol).

The researchers found that a single client QUIC Initial packet targeting a broadcast IP destination address could trigger a large response of initial packets. This manifested as both a server CPU amplification attack and a reflection amplification attack.

Transport and security handshakes

When using TCP and TLS there are two handshake interactions. First, is the TCP 3-way transport handshake. A client sends a SYN packet to a server, it responds with Continue reading

Cloudflare meets new Global Cross-Border Privacy standards

Cloudflare proudly leads the way with our approach to data privacy and the protection of personal information, and we’ve been an ardent supporter of the need for the free flow of data across jurisdictional borders. So today, on Data Privacy Day (also known internationally as Data Protection Day), we’re happy to announce that we’re adding our fourth and fifth privacy validations, and this time, they are global firsts! Cloudflare is the first organisation to announce that we have been successfully audited against the brand new Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules (Global CBPRs) for data controllers and the Global Privacy Rules for Processors (Global PRP). These validations demonstrate our support and adherence to global standards that provide for privacy-respecting data flows across jurisdictions. Organizations that have been successfully audited will be formally certified when the certifications officially launch, which we expect to happen later in 2025. 

Our participation in the Global CBPRs and Global PRP joins our roster of privacy validations: we were one of the first cybersecurity organizations to certify to the international privacy standard ISO 27701:2019 when it was published, and in 2022 we also certified to the cloud privacy certification, ISO 27018:2019. In 2023, we added our third Continue reading

Cloudflare thwarts over 47 million cyberthreats against Jewish and Holocaust educational websites

January 27 marks the International Holocaust Remembrance Day — a solemn occasion to honor the memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, along with countless others who fell victim to the Nazi regime's campaign of hatred and intolerance. This tragic chapter in human history serves as a stark reminder of the catastrophic consequences of prejudice and extremism. 

The United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 — the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau —  as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of this infamous extermination camp.

As the world reflects on this dark period, a troubling resurgence of antisemitism underscores the importance of vigilance. This growing hatred has spilled into the digital realm, with cyberattacks increasingly targeting Jewish and Holocaust remembrance and educational websites — spaces dedicated to preserving historical truth and fostering awareness.

For this reason, here at Cloudflare, we began to publish annual reports covering cyberattacks that target these organizations. These cyberattacks include DDoS attacks as well as bot and application attacks. The insights and trends are based on websites protected by Cloudflare. This is our fourth report, and you can view our previous Holocaust Continue reading

Demonstrating reduction of vulnerability classes: a key step in CISA’s “Secure by Design” pledge

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, securing software systems has never been more critical. Cyber threats continue to exploit systemic vulnerabilities in widely used technologies, leading to widespread damage and disruption. That said, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) helped shape best practices for the technology industry with their Secure-by-Design pledge. Cloudflare signed this pledge on May 8, 2024, reinforcing our commitment to creating resilient systems where security is not just a feature, but a foundational principle.

We’re excited to share an update aligned with one of CISA’s goals in the pledge: To reduce entire classes of vulnerabilities. This goal aligns with the Cloudflare Product Security program’s initiatives to continuously automate proactive detection and vigorously prevent vulnerabilities at scale.   

Cloudflare’s commitment to the CISA pledge reflects our dedication to transparency and accountability to our customers. This blog post outlines why we prioritized certain vulnerability classes, the steps we took to further eliminate vulnerabilities, and the measurable outcomes of our work.

The core philosophy that continues: prevent, not patch

Cloudflare’s core security philosophy is to prevent security vulnerabilities from entering production environments. One of the goals for Cloudflare’s Product Security team is to champion this philosophy and ensure Continue reading

AI Security and Safety Ecosystem

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen explosive growth over the past two years, with its potential for future advancements appearing virtually limitless. However, with this rapid expansion comes a growing wave of challenges and risks. From AI-generated scams to deepfakes and data breaches, many people have either directly experienced or heard about the … Continue reading AI Security and Safety Ecosystem

Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review

The 2024 Cloudflare Radar Year in Review is our fifth annual review of Internet trends and patterns observed throughout the year at both a global and country/region level across a variety of metrics. In this year’s review, we have added several new traffic, adoption, connectivity, and email security metrics, as well as the ability to do year-over-year and geographic comparisons for selected metrics. 

Below, we present a summary of key findings, and then explore them in more detail in subsequent sections.

Key Findings

Traffic

  • Global Internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024. 🔗

  • Google maintained its position as the most popular Internet service overall. OpenAI remained at the top of the Generative AI category. Binance remained at the top of the Cryptocurrency category. WhatsApp remained the top Messaging platform, and Facebook remained the top Social Media site. 🔗

  • Global traffic from Starlink grew 3.3x in 2024, in line with last year’s growth rate. After initiating service in Malawi in July 2023, Starlink traffic from that country grew 38x in 2024. As Starlink added new markets, we saw traffic grow rapidly in those locations. 🔗

  • Googlebot, Google’s web crawler, was responsible for the highest volume of request traffic to Continue reading

OpenVPN or WireGuard? A Detailed Performance Breakdown

OpenVPN has been a dominant player in the VPN space since its release in 2001. With a 23-year history, OpenVPN has proven to be a reliable and secure protocol. However, it has some downsides, particularly regarding performance and ease of use. OpenVPN creates a secure tunnel between two endpoints using SSL/TLS for encryption. While robust, the protocol is complex and requires considerable resources to run efficiently. Setting up and managing OpenVPN can be cumbersome, especially for DevOps teams juggling multiple environments and configurations. It wouldn’t be the first time an OpenVPN server stopped working because the TLS certificates expired. WireGuard, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block, having been introduced in recent years. What sets WireGuard apart from OpenVPN is its simplicity and efficiency. While OpenVPN relies on older, more complex cryptographic algorithms, WireGuard uses modern encryption that is both faster and more secure. Unlike OpenVPN, WireGuard is integrated directly into the Linux kernel, meaning it operates at a lower level and with less overhead. This results in faster connection times and lower resource usage. One of the significant benefits of WireGuard is its minimal codebase — about 10% the size of OpenVPN’s — which reduces Continue reading

What’s new in Cloudflare: Account Owned Tokens and Zaraz Automated Actions

In October 2024, we started publishing roundup blog posts to share the latest features and updates from our teams. Today, we are announcing general availability for Account Owned Tokens, which allow organizations to improve access control for their Cloudflare services. Additionally, we are launching Zaraz Automated Actions, which is a new feature designed to streamline event tracking and tool integration when setting up third-party tools. By automating common actions like pageviews, custom events, and e-commerce tracking, it removes the need for manual configurations.

Improving access control for Cloudflare services with Account Owned Tokens

Cloudflare is critical infrastructure for the Internet, and we understand that many of the organizations that build on Cloudflare rely on apps and integrations outside the platform to make their lives easier. In order to allow access to Cloudflare resources, these apps and integrations interact with Cloudflare via our API, enabled by access tokens and API keys. Today, the API Access Tokens and API keys on the Cloudflare platform are owned by individual users, which can lead to some difficulty representing services, and adds an additional dependency on managing users alongside token permissions.

What’s new about Account Owned Tokens

First, a little explanation because the terms can Continue reading

Cloudflare acquires Kivera to add simple, preventive cloud security to Cloudflare One

We’re excited to announce that Kivera, a cloud security, data protection, and compliance company, has joined Cloudflare. This acquisition extends our SASE portfolio to incorporate inline cloud app controls, empowering Cloudflare One customers with preventative security controls for all their cloud services.

In today’s digital landscape, cloud services and SaaS (software as a service) apps have become indispensable for the daily operation of organizations. At the same time, the amount of data flowing between organizations and their cloud providers has ballooned, increasing the chances of data leakage, compliance issues, and worse, opportunities for attackers. Additionally, many companies — especially at enterprise scale — are working directly with multiple cloud providers for flexibility based on the strengths, resiliency against outages or errors, and cost efficiencies of different clouds. 

Security teams that rely on Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) or similar tools for monitoring cloud configurations and permissions and Infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning are falling short due to detecting issues only after misconfigurations occur with an overwhelming volume of alerts. The combination of Kivera and Cloudflare One puts preventive controls directly into the deployment process, or ‘inline’, blocking errors before they happen. This offers a proactive approach essential to Continue reading

Enhance your website’s security with Cloudflare’s free security.txt generator

A story of security and simplicity

Meet Georgia, a diligent website administrator at a growing e-commerce company. Every day, Georgia juggles multiple tasks, from managing server uptime to ensuring customer data security. One morning, Georgia receives an email from a security researcher who discovered a potential vulnerability on the website. The researcher struggled to find the right contact information, leading to delays in reporting the issue. Georgia realizes the need for a standardized way to communicate with security researchers, ensuring that vulnerabilities are reported swiftly and efficiently. This is where security.txt comes in.

Why security.txt matters

Security.txt is becoming a widely adopted standard among security-conscious organizations. By providing a common location and format for vulnerability disclosure information, it helps bridge the gap between security researchers and organizations. This initiative is supported by major companies and aligns with global security best practices. By offering an automated security.txt generator for free, we aim to empower all of our users to enhance their security measures without additional costs.

In 2020, Cloudflare published the Cloudflare Worker for the security.txt generator as an open-source project on GitHub, demonstrating our commitment to enhancing web security. This tool is actively used Continue reading

How Cloudflare auto-mitigated world record 3.8 Tbps DDoS attack

Since early September, Cloudflare's DDoS protection systems have been combating a month-long campaign of hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks. Cloudflare’s defenses mitigated over one hundred hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks throughout the month, with many exceeding 2 billion packets per second (Bpps) and 3 terabits per second (Tbps). The largest attack peaked 3.8 Tbps — the largest ever disclosed publicly by any organization. Detection and mitigation was fully autonomous. The graphs below represent two separate attack events that targeted the same Cloudflare customer and were mitigated autonomously.

A mitigated 3.8 Terabits per second DDoS attack that lasted 65 seconds

A mitigated 2.14 billion packet per second DDoS attack that lasted 60 seconds

Cloudflare customers are protected

Cloudflare customers using Cloudflare’s HTTP reverse proxy services (e.g. Cloudflare WAF and Cloudflare CDN) are automatically protected.

Cloudflare customers using Spectrum and Magic Transit are also automatically protected. Magic Transit customers can further optimize their protection by deploying Magic Firewall rules to enforce a strict positive and negative security model at the packet layer.

Other Internet properties may not be safe

The scale and frequency of these attacks are unprecedented. Due to their sheer size and bits/packets per second rates, these Continue reading

Wrapping up another Birthday Week celebration

2024 marks Cloudflare’s 14th birthday. Birthday Week each year is packed with major announcements and the release of innovative new offerings, all focused on giving back to our customers and the broader Internet community. Birthday Week has become a proud tradition at Cloudflare and our culture, to not just stay true to our mission, but to always stay close to our customers. We begin planning for this week of celebration earlier in the year and invite everyone at Cloudflare to participate.

Months before Birthday Week, we invited teams to submit ideas for what to announce. We were flooded with submissions, from proposals for implementing new standards to creating new products for developers. Our biggest challenge is finding space for it all in just one week — there is still so much to build. Good thing we have a birthday to celebrate each year, but we might need an extra day in Birthday Week next year!

In case you missed it, here’s everything we announced during 2024’s Birthday Week:

Monday

What

In a sentence…

Start auditing and controlling the AI models accessing your content

Understand which AI-related bots and crawlers can access your website, and which content you choose to allow Continue reading