#26494 Cloudflare blocks SourceForge

[sourcesearcher]

Hello,

Cloudflare is denying access to your website, and several others sites. This affects non-mainstream browsers which are fully secure and updated like Pale Moon for desktop, and possibly other browsers too.

There is no explanation in the Cloudflare initial check, just an endless "Verifying" loop (attached). There is no explanation from Cloudflare themselves either, apart from the automated mantra "use a major browser except Internet Explorer".

This is not the first time this form of censorship occurs. Please consider taking appropriate action. I understand we are in the minority, but I'm sure you don't want a Google Chrome-exclusive Internet either, dictated by Cloudflare's supervision.

Below is an older similar case. This used to be solved fairly quickly by Cloudflare (it is an intermittent issue), but now it seems they are not reacting at all.

Thank you

https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/25671/

[tlathm]

I can confirm this behavior as well. As mentioned above this time it appears that Cloudflare has no plans to correct this. They've closed the community forum post related to this basically telling everyone to use a mainstream browser. This is NOT how the web is supposed to work:

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/access-denied-to-pale-moon-desktop-browser/764330

[sourcesearcher]

An older response from a Cloudflare product manager is worth quoting here:

This looks like a bug with our "Managed Challenge" security action
that's causing the loop. This feature attempts to determine browser
versus non-browser traffic and block non-browsers. The fact that the
challenge is currently not working for Waterfox Classic and Pale Moon is
not by intent, and we do not want to be in the business of saying one
browser is more legitimate than another.

Link to original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31319523

[SourceForge Support]

Hi,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We have made some rule adjustments with regards to Pale Moon. Can you check if its working for you now?

If you still get the challenge, please provide your browser user-agent string, the URL visited, and your IP address. Then we can investigate further.

Sincerely,
SourceForge.net Support

[sourcesearcher]

Thank you. Yes, now sourceforge.net is accessible again.

It's interesting to know this can be solved without the intervention of Cloudflare. Unless you completely disabled their checks for Pale Moon alone? Just curious, and this information may be of help with other websites.

[SourceForge Support]

Yes, we have many custom rules to determine when to show a CloudFlare challenge, and modified some of them to avoid impact on Pale Moon users.