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1343 points Hold-And-Modify | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Hello.

Cloudflare's Browser Intergrity Check/Verification/Challenge feature used by many websites, is denying access to users of non-mainstream browsers like Pale Moon.

Users reports began on January 31:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32045

This situation occurs at least once a year, and there is no easy way to contact Cloudflare. Their "Submit feedback" tool yields no results. A Cloudflare Community topic was flagged as "spam" by members of that community and was promptly locked with no real solution, and no official response from Cloudflare:

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/access-denied-to-pale-moo...

Partial list of other browsers that are being denied access:

Falkon, SeaMonkey, IceCat, Basilisk.

Hacker News 2022 post about the same issue, which brought attention and had Cloudflare quickly patching the issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317886

A Cloudflare product manager declared back then: "...we do not want to be in the business of saying one browser is more legitimate than another."

As of now, there is no official response from Cloudflare. Internet access is still denied by their tool.

1. zb3 ◴[] No.42955229[source]
Do these browsers employ any additional tracking protections? "Browser integrity checks" are browser-specific and they might rely on the "entropy" those tracking vectors provide.
replies(1): >>42955273 #
2. zb3 ◴[] No.42955273[source]
So this would only be "bad" move by cloudflare if you could get around it by recompiling the browser with spoofed UA/strings. Otherwise they'd have to support every possible engine which is infeasible. That saying, the "open web" is indeed dead.
replies(1): >>42976559 #
3. doctor_radium ◴[] No.42976559[source]
> Otherwise they'd have to support every possible engine which is infeasible.

If I understand correctly, this is why I've said on previous Cloudflare threads that they've managed to design a game they can never win. They project a certain omniscience, but then all this sh*t happens. We need to persuade them to stop playing.