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.
I know it happens, but also I've run plenty of servers hooked directly to the internet (with standard *nix security precautions and hosting provider DDoS protection) and haven't had it actually be an issue.
So why run absolutely everything through Cloudflare?
I do. Many people I know do. In my risk model, DDoS is something purely theoretical. Yes it can happen, but you have to seriously upset someone for it to maybe happen.
A while ago, my company was hiring and conducting interviews, and after one candidate was rejected, one of our sites got hit by a DDoS. I wasn't in the room when people were dealing with it, but in the post-incident review, they said "we're 99% sure we know exactly who this came from".
Take that story for instance. Here's how that goes in the physical world, just to show how unbelievably ridiculous it is.
So you didn't get the job? What's your next step?
I'll stop by their office and keep people from entering the front doors by running around in front of them. That'll show those bastards.