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Nick Sullivan: Cloudflare – The Internet’s (De)centralized Security Blanket

Dec 4, 2018

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We enter dozens of trust relationships ever time we interact with the Web. Browsers, ISPs, DNS providers, cloud hosting companies, all the way down to the handful of people who control certificate root keys; we rely on the integrity of these intermediaries to serve reliable, and accurate information. The concentration of power by any one of these actors threatens to compromise the very foundational principles of the Web. Decentralized technologies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, and IPFS seek to reverse this trend.

We’re joined by Nick Sullivan, Chief Cryptographer at Cloudflare. Founded less than 10 years ago, the company offers content delivery services (CND), DNS, and DDoS protection to over 12 million websites. The company contributes to open source cryptography libraries, some of which are used by Etherum. They recently launched an IPFS gateway and features which allow users to have strong guarantees as to the integrity of the content.

Topics covered in this episode:

Nick’s background as a cryptographer and previous position at Apple
The Internet’s infrastructure and trust model
How Cloudflare is experimenting with IPFS
The challenges to hosting static websites with IPFS
Cloudflare’s Onion routing service (Tor) and the benefits to users
The Roughtime protocol and encrypted SNI
Cloudflare’s contribution to open-source cryptography libraries
The vulnerabilities of DNS and Cloudflare’s free private DNS service (1.1.1.1)

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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/264