Cloudflare & You: A Little Known Website May Have Exposed Your Data

As an IT person, there’s a point when it seems like there isn’t much that can really shake up the industry. And then something comes along that does. From exciting new hardware to frightening new viruses, there does seem to occasionally be that thing. The current thing has been dubbed Cloudbleed, in reference to a memory leak in Cloudflare’s code that hemorrhaged out data.

Who is Cloudflare? What do they do?

Cloudflare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service provider.

Cloudflare CDN vs without CDN comparison map showing 31ms vs 9ms averaged page load times for users in various locations in the us.
Cloudflare’s description of how their CDN service works and the improvement it makes in website load times.

CDNs are used to help websites operate globally by replicating a site to servers all over the world. Essentially, you pay a CDN to copy your website so that a user in Dubai has the same experience as users in New York, NY or someone three blocks from your server. One CDN server may encompass multiple sites, and there’s no real division between what sites are contained on that server. They don’t have a “kids site” server, a “porn site” server, “business site” server, “wholesome non-profit” server, etc. all of it is stored together. Continue reading “Cloudflare & You: A Little Known Website May Have Exposed Your Data”