A public letter to CloudFlare to fix their snoopy vendor.

What

For the last few years, various websites hosted on GitHub Pages and fronted using CloudFlare have been blocked in India due to CloudFlare relying on a upstream network provider with a misconfigured network (Airtel). The network flow looks like this:

User->CloudFlare->Airtel->GitHub Pages

If a website is using "Flexible SSL" or "No SSL" as configured on CloudFlare, the connection between CloudFlare and GitHub isn't encrypted, and Airtel blocks many such websites. Because CloudFlare terminates the TLS connection at their end, the browser shows a padlock, thus giving more authenticity to this incorrect block.

Impact

These are just a few of the many websites blocked. This disproportionately impacts the developer community, and especially older websites that had a reason to use CloudFlare on top of GitHub Pages - TLS support. Now that GitHub Pages natively offers SSL, most of these websites can directly be hosted on GitHub Pages.

Here's a list of various such reports: (Click to expand)

Website	Reports
teachyourselfcs.com	https://twitter.com/oznova_/status/1467957261221830657
neovim.io	https://twitter.com/sanchayan_maity/status/1479131300040564737 https://github.com/neovim/neovim.github.io/issues/254
usebottles.com	https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29358915 https://github.com/bottlesdevs/website/issues/12
thephpleague.com	https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/r3bc78/hey_anyone_facing_issues_with_airtel/ https://github.com/thephpleague/thephpleague.github.io/issues/102
tldr.sh	https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/p3kxi4/why_are_some_nonporn_dev_related_websites_blocked/ https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr/issues/7626
pennapps.com	https://twitter.com/skxrxn/status/1479520588955742209?s=20
termux.com	https://twitter.com/geekodour/status/1478963440412626946 https://github.com/termux/termux.github.io/issues/56
rsms.me	https://twitter.com/sahilk/status/1479489063874752512 https://twitter.com/sahilk/status/1441104954408587264
shantanugoel.com	https://twitter.com/prohack/status/1422233887522975744 https://forum.internetfreedom.in/t/website-blocking-report-and-wynk-ads-shantanugoel-com/2318
codewithrockstar.com	https://github.com/RockstarLang/codewithrockstar.com/issues/11 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29481644
web.mightyme.in	https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70420313/getting-the-website-has-been-blocked-as-per-order-of-ministry-of-electronics-an
buyday.in	https://stackoverflow.com/a/70426860
boxbilling.org	https://github.com/boxbilling/boxbilling/issues/1178 https://twitter.com/MichaelAnandR/status/1471935979787194373
Node-OS.com	https://github.com/NodeOS/nodeos.github.io/issues/28
konvajs.com	https://github.com/konvajs/konva/issues/1161
breaks.eu.org	https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/rg4fqb/airtel_blocked_my_projects_website_please_help/
platesphp.com	https://github.com/thephpleague/plates/issues/288 https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/r3bc78/hey_anyone_facing_issues_with_airtel/
coreui.io	https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/p12qtq/why_did_govt_of_india_blocked_a_html_template/ https://github.com/coreui/coreui-website/issues/19
4fw.pw	https://github.com/captn3m0/hello-cloudflare/issues/2
mpp.su	https://github.com/captn3m0/hello-cloudflare/issues/2
about.hacktohell.org	https://twitter.com/hacktohell/status/1479484933785538562
one9x.org	https://twitter.com/Ramank775/status/1465979965002846209
kossiitkgp.org	https://twitter.com/OrkoHunter/status/1425089684535975937
orkohunter.net	https://twitter.com/OrkoHunter/status/1425089684535975937
treyhunner.com	https://twitter.com/abdulmuneer/status/1466289536833523714
wowjs.uk	https://twitter.com/rahulrrnair/status/1465629811368357888
akshatmittal.com	https://twitter.com/iakshatmittal/status/1479517378455040002
garudahacks.com	https://twitter.com/skxrxn/status/1479520588955742209?s=20
noflojs.org	https://github.com/noflo/noflo/issues/863
docs.pixelfed.org	https://github.com/pixelfed/docs/issues/80

Several of these websites are critical to many developers, and none of these deserve to get blocked in India. Some of the above website are no longer blocked, because the website owner switched away from Flexible SSL to Strict SSL. However, this only happens when someone notices the block, debugs the issue correctly, and the website owner understands and fixes the issue. This is not a viable solution in this case.

There's lots more reports on Twitter.

Call to CloudFlare

Hey @CloudFlare, please take care of this. Indian developers have been blocked out various critical websites because your upstream vendor has a misconfiguration. This has been going on for years, with no action or update at your end.

Here's a few simple requests:

1. Get Airtel to fix the issue at their end.
2. Switch to a different upstream if that doesn't happen.
3. Publish a transparency report acknowledging the issue and confirming how many websites were incorrectly blocked without a court-order.
4. Notify Flexible SSL users that use GitHub Pages that their websites are getting blocked in India.

Flexible SSL is a decade-old product that has no place in the modern web. Users should get a big red warning when enabling such a product in today's times with free SSL certificates.

Help, my website is blocked

If you got a report about your website being blocked in India, with a message that reads:

The website has been blocked as per order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000.

Here's what you can do:

1. Switch from CloudFlare to direct GitHub Pages, which supports TLS now.
2. Enable HTTPS on GitHub pages, and switch the upstream on CloudFlare to get strict SSL instead of flexible.

If you aren't using CloudFlare, please open an issue.

If you'd like to notify a site owner, please send them this link: https://github.com/captn3m0/hello-cloudflare/blob/main/README.md#help-my-website-is-blocked

Help fight Censorship in India

If you'd like to support the fight to fix the state of internet censorship in India, and bring more transparency to how it works, please Donate to the Internet Freedom Foundation. You will need a valid Indian PAN Card.