Candice Lanier - CloudFlare has been a subject of controversy for some time now due to its providing services to terrorist organizations such as ISIS. Many threats are issued from these websites, in particular to the United States, and also to specific individuals.
Several others, including Yahoo! and GoDaddy, were also found to be providing services to terrorists, but CloudFlare is by far the biggest offender. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, however, CloudFlare has made the conscious decision to continue to allow the terrorist websites to operate.
A project of Anonymous’ #OpISIS, #OpCloudFlare targets businesses which provide services to terrorists. Some have argued that by providing services to ISIS, these businesses are providing material support to terrorists.
The Mirror spoke to the Anon who launched the CloudFlare campaign who said: "We will not give up until this issue is resolved. As an American it makes me sick to see one of our companies disrespect the USA.” He went on to say that, "if these sites were removed from Cloudflare's protection, the operation would end. Whilst these sites are still up, ISIS is able to recruit and spread propaganda." CloudFlare is said to be hosting over 50 ISIS related sites which recruit and distribute propaganda.
Initially, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince claimed he would not cease providing services to ISIS because he supports free speech. But, free speech under the First Amendment only goes so far. It does not protect incitement to commit an unlawful act, threats or solicitation to commit a crime. He also said that blocking these sites under the advisement of Anonymous would be tantamount to submitting to “mob rule,”
Now, Prince is indicating law enforcement and intel agents have asked him to continue to protect the ISIS sites. According to a report from The Mirror, Prince hinted that some of the sites may be honeypots set up to snare wannabe terrorists. A honeypot is a trap set to lure some manner of interaction with an information system--an Internet sting operation.
Prince has, in the past, said that CloudFlare will respond to subpoenas from law enforcement to take sites offline. But, he said that, “sometimes we have court orders that order us to not take sites down.” An example of that was the case of CarderProfit, a Cloudflare-protected carding forum that turned out to be an elaborate sting operation set up by the FBI.
As it turns out, before founding CloudFlare, Prince started Project Honey Pot:
“To start, we need to look at the history. CloudFlare comes from a product called Project Honey Pot that was initially launched at Paul Graham‘s MIT Spam Conference. Prince was a self-described “recovering lawyer” with a background in computer science. Project Honey Pot was launched with the goal of helping to track down all of the fraud and abuse that was happening on the Internet, spam included.
In 2007 the Department of Homeland Security reached out to Prince, essentially asking him if he had any idea what technology that he owned. Honey Pot had grown to be used by over 100,000 web administrators and millions of sites, all sending back amazing data about how spammers, hackers and fraud happened online. In short, CloudFlare wasn’t at all about speed, but rather about security. Each site that fed into Project Honey Pot only served to make it more accurate and smarter.”
In Prince’s own words:
“Back in 2003, Lee Holloway and I started Project Honey Pot as an open-source project to track online fraud and abuse. The Project allowed anyone with a website to install a piece of code and track hackers and spammers. We ran it as a hobby and didn't think much about it until, in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security called and said, 'Do you have any idea how valuable the data you have is?' That started us thinking about how we could effectively deploy the data from Project Honey Pot, as well as other sources, in order to protect websites online. That turned into the initial impetus for CloudFlare."
His LinkedIn profile does mention his "substantial work with government and law enforcement." But, are the ISIS websites that CloudFlare refuses to take down actually honeypots? Is Prince working in conjunction with the authorities in keeping these sites online? Until recently the feds had not made any terrorism-linked arrests linked to their Internet surveillance.
On Wednesday, an Augusta, Georgia resident pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to aid ISIS. FBI agents said they had been monitoring his social media accounts as part of their year-long investigation. And, last week the FBI arrested two men in California on suspicion of terrorism related charges, apparently due to the suspects fitting a “pattern of individuals who have been recruited by ISIS as foreign fighters, particularly through social media propaganda.”
@WauchulaGhost, an #OpISIS member, is skeptical of Prince’s claims, having spent a great deal of time monitoring the ISIS sites CloudFlare hosts and is familiar with the technical aspects of the sites. And, according to an Anon interviewed by The Mirror, "If law enforcement has these sites, we would be the first to know," he said. "When CloudFlare proves police involvement, we will back off."
Most recently, CloudFlare reportedly became involved in a controversy in which it refused to comply with the request of the Recording Industry Association of America who allege CloudFlare is protecting a Grooveshark copycat from a lawsuit.
CloudFlare has also been accused of protecting bestiality websites. This is a highly disturbing industry and Anonymous has an op for that--#OpBeast. According to the OpBeast Facebook page:
“For almost a year we have been fighting against one of the most vile and inhuman practices in the world. The ability to have sexual intercourse with animals. Originally, #OpBeast solely focused on Denmark (#OpNullDenmark), not specifically about bestiality but also for whaling at the Faroe Islands, euthanizing "surplus" of endangered animals in zoos, as well as a bad reputation for horrendous abattoirs. However, the bestiality laws needed updating and a lot of focus was directed towards it. On April 21st 2015, Dan Jorgenson, Denmark's Minister of Food and Agriculture, officially passed a law which finally banned bestiality altogether, leading to the success and also end #OpNullDenmark.”
The group is planning a TweetStorm in June and asks that supporters don the OpBeast Twibbon. To follow this operation on Twitter, follow @AnonOpBeast and @PriscillaLakerv.
As for #OpCloudFlare, operators have moved forward with launching CloudFlare Fridays. The purpose of Cloudflare Fridays is to bring awareness to the world that CloudFlare is hosting ISIS websites. For updates on this movement, follow these hashtags on Twitter: #OpCouldFlare, #CloudFlareSupportsISIS and #CloudFlareFriday for more information.
The movement has been gaining more media attention, in addition to those who have been reporting on the situation for some time, such as The Mirror, International Business Times, Wayne Dupree, Stacy Rush and Dave Weinbaum, to name a few.
Stay tuned for more CloudFlare updates.
