August 2024 Summaries

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago saw a rise in internet traffic, particularly for Kamala Harris-related sites and fundraising domains. DNS traffic to these sites increased by up to 99% following key moments of the event. Additionally, there was an uptick in aggregated DNS traffic to general US news sites during the convention. Cyberattacks targeting politically-related websites also continued during this period. Emails mentioning the candidates in the subject line increased, with a higher percentage of spam and malicious emails for Donald Trump compared to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

In September 2022, Cloudflare introduced Single Redirects as a modern replacement for the URL Forwarding feature of Page Rules. Built on top of the Ruleset Engine, this new product offered a powerful syntax and enhanced performance. Today, wildcard support is now available across Cloudflare's Ruleset Engine-based products, including Cache Rules, Compression Rules, Configuration Rules, Custom Errors, Origin Rules, Redirect Rules, Snippets, Transform Rules, Web Application Firewall (WAF), Waiting Room, and more. This enhancement ensures high performance while making it easier to create dynamic and flexible URL patterns and beyond.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the first three cryptographic standards designed to resist an attack from quantum computers: ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. This marks a significant milestone for ensuring that today's communications remain secure in a future world where large-scale quantum computers are a reality. The threat of quantum computers lies in their ability to solve mathematical puzzles upon which most widely deployed cryptography depends. NIST launched a public competition in 2016 to solicit, evaluate, and standardize new "post-quantum" cryptographic schemes that are designed to be resistant to attacks from quantum computers. The publication of the final standards marks a significant milestone in an eight-year global community effort managed by NIST to prepare for the arrival of quantum computers.

During the summer of 2024, Cloudflare hosted approximately 60 interns from around the world to work on real-world challenges and cutting-edge projects. The interns tackled various tasks such as building a system for autograding intern applications, creating a new threads API for Workers AI team, working on data center audits, and developing an internal tool for Capacity Planning team. In addition to their work, the interns participated in various events like ping-pong tournaments, food bank volunteering, remote snack times, and executive chats. The internships provided valuable experiences and connections with Cloudflare employees from different departments.

Cloudflare Stream introduces first-class portrait (vertical) video support with full HD quality processing for newly uploaded or ingested videos. The new feature addresses the growing popularity of short-form video content applications such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts, where users have been confused by lower quality portrait videos on their smartphones. The update involves modifying the entire video encoding pipeline to support high-definition portrait videos, resulting in a significant increase in video quality for users.

Phishing attacks remain a significant threat in cybersecurity incidents, with over 90% of breaches originating from such attempts. These attacks often exploit email as the primary vector but have expanded to other channels like text messaging and private messaging applications. Multi-channel phishing is becoming increasingly common, targeting various platforms such as cloud collaboration tools and social media sites. To combat this growing issue, comprehensive security solutions are necessary that can detect and protect against different attack vectors. Cloudflare offers a multi-layered protection approach with its One product suite, which includes email security, gateway, browser isolation, digital loss prevention (DLP), and other features to ensure seamless and effective detections for modern workforces.

Cloudflare has introduced a new feature called Cloud Connector that simplifies the routing of traffic between multiple cloud providers seamlessly. This service is an extension of Cloudflare's Connectivity Cloud and allows users to route specific requests to popular public cloud services such as AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, or R2 without needing additional rules. The feature is designed for various use cases, including e-commerce sites, media companies, and developers looking to simplify backend configurations. It's available for all Cloudflare plans, with a particular focus on Free, Pro, and Business customers.

The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics concluded on August 11, with a significant impact on global internet traffic. France experienced the most pronounced drops in internet activity during key Olympic events, particularly during the opening and closing ceremonies. Other countries also saw decreased online activity during these times, with viewers shifting to broadcast TV for live coverage of the games. The rise in DNS traffic for official Olympic websites and streaming platforms covering the event indicates strong interest in online coverage, especially among certain audiences, complementing traditional TV viewership. Cybersecurity threats, including DDoS attacks on sponsor sites and the increase in Olympic-related emails (including spam and malicious ones), underscore both the marketing impact of this global event and its vulnerabilities.

Cloudflare Radar has added a new metric to its traffic graphs, reflecting the number of HTTP requests. This complements existing metrics for total traffic and HTTP traffic, which are measured in bytes derived from aggregated NetFlow data. By comparing bytes with requests, users can gain additional insights into traffic patterns and user behavior. The new data is incorporated into Radar's Overview and Traffic sections, allowing users to see how request volume has changed during a selected time period compared to the previous period. This provides a more direct proxy for user activity and helps distinguish between real events and data pipeline issues.

Cloudflare has implemented advanced fingerprinting techniques, such as HTTP Signature, ClientHello fingerprint (v1 & v2), HTTP/2 fingerprint, and JA3 fingerprint, to enhance security measures and improve data analytics capabilities. These methods help accurately score and classify bots, detect anomalies, and identify potential threats in real-time with microsecond latency. The introduction of JA4 fingerprint and JA4 Signals further strengthens Cloudflare's network intelligence by providing comprehensive traffic analysis, precise anomaly detection, and dynamic security enforcement based on aggregated data from a global scale.

Cloudflare has announced its worldwide 2023 Channel Partner Award winners, recognizing partners who have significantly contributed to the company's success. These partners extend solutions and support that help customers control application complexity, reduce cyber risk, and cut costs while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction. The awards cover various categories such as technology services distributor of the year, partner of the year, growth partners of the year, technical excellence award (pre-sales), and more. These achievements highlight the transformative potential of partnerships and collaboration in driving significant growth and innovation for both Cloudflare and its partners.

On August 8, 2024, Cloudflare celebrates the first anniversary of its Project Cybersafe Schools initiative. Launched on August 8, 2023, this project provides free security tools to small school districts in the United States. The initiative supports eligible K-12 public school districts with a package of Zero Trust cybersecurity solutions without any time limit. Since its launch, Project Cybersafe Schools has helped protect more than 160,000 students, teachers, and staff from various threats such as ransomware attacks and phishing emails. The program aims to help schools minimize their exposure to common cyber threats by offering enterprise-level Zero Trust cybersecurity services for free and with no time limit.

Cloudflare is set to roll out an automatic configuration feature that ensures secure connections between its network and customers' origin servers starting from August 8, 2024. The new Automatic SSL/TLS setting will be made available for Free and Pro users on September 16, 2024, followed by Business and Enterprise users. This feature aims to simplify the encryption process between Cloudflare and origins while maintaining enhanced security without causing any site downtime. It leverages the SSL/TLS Recommender system that has been in production for three years, providing high-quality origin-security recommendations for Cloudflare's customers. The Automatic SSL/TLS setting will not impact users who are already in Strict or Full (strict) mode nor those who have opted out.

The text discusses the evolution of Cloudflare's infrastructure, focusing on its global backbone in 2024. It highlights the benefits for customers, including increased capacity, improved reliability and performance, and better control over routing. The backbone is a dedicated high-capacity optical fiber network that connects Cloudflare's data centers worldwide, enabling efficient traffic exchange through peering and IP transit methods. Operating a global backbone allows Cloudflare to manage traffic more effectively and cost-efficiently than relying on third-party networks. The text also emphasizes the strategic expansion of the backbone in regions with less developed Internet infrastructure, aiming to reduce latency and improve performance for end users. Overall, the backbone plays a crucial role in Cloudflare's mission to help build a better Internet by providing secure, reliable, and high-performance connectivity solutions.

In July, Cloudflare Radar detected several significant internet disruptions in Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, and Venezuela. In Bangladesh, widespread protests led to a near-complete internet shutdown on July 18, affecting both mobile and broadband networks. The shutdown was lifted five days later, with connectivity gradually being restored. Syria experienced multiple internet outages during nationwide exams in July, as well as an additional disruption due to an air conditioner explosion at a data center. Pakistan faced a two-hour internet disruption on July 31 attributed to a technical glitch in the international submarine cable affecting PTCL network, although another report suggested misconfigured firewall as the cause. In Venezuela, no government-directed internet shutdowns were observed during the contested presidential election, but significant drops in traffic were noted.