Authorities seemed rather confident that they’d shut down popular torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay (TPB) once and for all following a raid on its servers late last year. The resilient site resurfaced just a month later, however, and is now even easier to access thanks to a partnership with CloudFlare.
The UK’s High Court issued a series of blocking orders in 2012 to block TPB and other torrent and streaming portals. Since that time, a number of major ISPs in the region were required to enforce the orders which meant determined individuals had to jump through hoops to regain access to the site.
That no longer appears to be the case.
According to the operator of a Pirate Bay proxy (via Torrent Freak), what is likely happening is that when HTTPS Strict is enabled on CloudFlare, it removes certain identifiable information from a request. When an ISP checks the header to see if it is on the banned list, they get nothing and treat the site as unbanned.
The operator adds that any site that uses CloudFlare, has properly configured and signed its SSL certificate and enables HTTPS Strict should be good to go. What’s more, CloudFlare adds an additional layer or protection because the true location of a server is hidden behind CloudFlare.
Other benefits of CloudFlare include the fact that it helps to protect against DDoS attacks and reduces the bandwidth burden put on servers.
The partnership means that those who have had access to the site blocked are suddenly finding they can visit without incident, a fact that is steadily increasing TPB’s traffic.
https://www.techspot.com/news/60093-pirate-bay-use-cloudflare-means-isp-blocks-ineffective.html
