December 2019 Summaries

On December 13, 2019, the adoption of "Extensible Prioritization Scheme for HTTP" was announced by Tommy Pauly, co-chair of the IETF HTTP Working Group. This new approach to HTTP prioritization aims to improve web page loading times and enhance user experience. The scheme is designed to load the right bytes at the right time, ensuring optimal performance. It involves a collaborative process between client and server, with clients sending priority signals that servers can use to schedule the delivery of response data. The adoption of this new scheme marks the start of further work in standardizing HTTP prioritization.

On December 27th, 2019, Val Vesa shared a blog post about his experience working at Cloudflare and how the company's diverse team came together to create a video wishing all their readers and customers a happy winter season. The video features greetings in over 50 languages spoken by native speakers from various countries on the team. The initiative began with an internal message asking colleagues for their language skills, leading to a collaborative effort that resulted in the informal video.

On December 27th at 6:00 PM, Connor Peshek introduced the eleventh edition of "The Serverlist". This edition provides updates on serverless space, developer tutorials, discussions with other serverless developers and information about upcoming meetups and conferences. To receive future editions directly in your mailbox, sign up using the provided link while ensuring that your privacy is maintained.

The 2019 holiday shopping season saw Black Friday as the biggest day for online shopping, followed closely by Thanksgiving Day itself. Cyber Monday ranked fourth in terms of checkout events across Cloudflare's network. Online shopping peaked during the week leading up to Thanksgiving and continued through the weekend into Cyber Monday. The trend showed that consumers felt more comfortable using online shopping as long as they received their purchases by the weekend before Christmas, possibly due to fast shipping options.

Cloudflare has released its transparency report for the first half of 2019, which includes notable updates such as supplementing their warrant canaries and addressing the UK/US Cloud agreement. The company removed one of its warrant canaries due to terminating service to Daily Stormer in 2017 and 8chan in August 2019 for failing to moderate hate-filled content on their platforms. They have committed to reporting any action taken to terminate a user that could be viewed as political pressure. Regarding the UK/US Cloud agreement, Cloudflare intends to comply with appropriately scoped and targeted requests from UK law enforcement after the agreement goes into effect in March 2020.

The article discusses the history and operation of CDNJS, a popular Content Delivery Network (CDN) that hosts libraries for building websites. It explains how CDNJS allows users to load libraries from a common location, improving performance by caching files on users' computers. The author also talks about Cloudflare's involvement in managing CDNJS and the future of the service as web browsers begin to use separate cache systems for each website. The article concludes with an invitation for readers to contribute to the project or follow its updates.

Cloudflare has introduced a Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) Scanning Tool to help combat the spread of such content online. The tool, which is now available in every customer's dashboard at no cost regardless of their plan level, will scan all Internet properties that have enabled CSAM Scanning for illegal content. When flagged, Cloudflare sends a notice to the user and blocks access to the content with a 451 "blocked for legal reasons" status code. The tool is designed to help protect businesses from the legal and reputational risks posed by hosting CSAM.

Cloudflare has introduced a powerful GraphQL Analytics API that provides access to all performance, security, and reliability data from one endpoint. The API allows users to select exactly what they need, whether it's one metric for one domain or multiple metrics aggregated for all domains. This new feature aims to simplify the process of building analytics dashboards and exploring data by offering a standard, flexible syntax for describing the required data. The GraphQL Analytics API also offers introspection, allowing users to query the API itself to see available datasets, fields, and operations.

Cloudflare has released Firewall Analytics, a new product that utilizes their GraphQL Analytics API. The API allows for defining data and response format, enabling quick prototyping and iteration based on beta user feedback. Key use cases addressed by Firewall Analytics include identifying spikes in firewall activity over time, understanding common attributes of threats, and drilling down into granular details of individual events to identify potential false positives. The GraphQL Basics section provides an overview of the query format and schema structure. The article then demonstrates how to use the API for visualizing spikes in firewall activity, highlighting top Ns with common attributes, and identifying false positives.

Cloudflare introduces two new tools to help users understand and respond faster to origin server downtime. Standalone Health Checks notify users as soon as problems are detected at their origin server without needing a Cloudflare Load Balancer. Passive Origin Monitoring automatically notifies users when a problem occurs, with no configuration required. Additionally, Zero-Downtime Failover can automatically prevent failures by retrying requests to the origin. These features aim to improve application reliability and enhance brand trust for customers on Pro, Business, or Enterprise plans.

Cloudflare has introduced Load Balancing Analytics in its dashboard, providing insights on traffic steering decisions for users. The analytics service includes an overview of traffic flow that can be filtered by load balancer, pool, origin, and region; a latency map indicating origin health status and latency metrics from Cloudflare's global network; and event logs denoting changes in origin health. These features help users understand their infrastructure better, manage capacity, plan for upcoming needs, and optimize request performance worldwide. The analytics service is powered by the GraphQL Analytics API, which allows users to extract insights from Load Balancing logs easily.

Cloudflare's Athenian Project, launched two years ago, aims to protect state and local government election websites from cyber attacks by providing its highest level of services for free. The project aligns with the company's mission to help build a better internet and ensure citizens' right to information. Since its inception, Cloudflare has helped 156 local or state websites in 26 states combat various types of cyber threats. As the 2020 U.S. elections approach, the need for security protection of critical election infrastructure is more important than ever. The company plans to continue learning and adapting its services to better protect these sites and assist state and local election websites in preparing for upcoming elections.

Cloudflare has announced a number of new products and features that provide deeper security and reliability insights, "proactive" analytics when there's a problem, and more powerful ways to explore data. These include Product Analytics such as Firewall Analytics and Load Balancing Analytics, Monitoring tools for origin traffic, Data tools with a new API for custom dashboards, and Account Analytics for aggregated information across domains under an account. These features are designed to enhance the ease of use and effectiveness of Cloudflare's services.

Cloudflare has expanded its Firewall Analytics tool availability to all paid plans and introduced several improvements. The enhancements include increased data retention from 14 days to 30 or 90 days, adaptive sampling for faster results during high traffic, event-based logging for better visibility into rule execution, challenge solve rates to help reduce false positives, exporting of up to 500 Firewall events, and column customization for personalized threat analysis.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a significant concern for internet service providers, including Cloudflare. Since its inception, Cloudflare has been committed to addressing this issue and collaborating with organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The company's approach includes proper reporting of allegations, operation of a "trusted reporter" program, and termination of services when necessary. In addition, Cloudflare is working on implementing new products that will allow them to remove content from the internet if flagged by tools like PhotoDNA. The company continues to work with law enforcement agencies and child safety organizations to combat this crime effectively.

Over the last two years, Cloudflare has been working to improve its usage of color in order to enhance accessibility and visual cohesion. The company initially conducted an audit of its existing websites to identify patterns and inconsistencies in color use. It then developed a new palette that was aligned with its brand colors and provided better contrast for accessibility purposes. To ensure the successful implementation of this new palette, Cloudflare built tools to help visualize color changes and facilitate color migrations. The company is still working on updating its web properties with the new palette but has made significant progress towards more visual cohesion across its marketing materials and products.

On December 2nd, 2019 at 8:29 PM, Connor Peshek introduced the tenth edition of The Serverlist. This publication provides updates on serverless technology, offers developer tutorials, encourages discussions among serverless developers, and highlights upcoming meetups and conferences. To receive The Serverlist directly in your email, sign up using the provided link while ensuring your privacy is respected.