After weeks of mounting pressure, Cloudflare has finally dropped its security services to the online harassment forum Kiwi Farms, infamous for doxxing, swatting and stalking women and transgender people.
Cloudflare co-founder and CEO, Matthew Prince, announced that Kiwi Farms is blocked, and the site can no longer be accessed through their infrastructure, even if it is moved to other providers. The company protected Kiwi Farms from cyberattacks, including DDoS.
“The rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life,” Prince said.
The campaign to drop Kiwi Farms from Cloudflare started in August after Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti (also known as Keffals) was swatted — prank calling the police to send a SWAT team to someone’s house — as a result of transphobic targetting, allegedly by the members of Kiwi Farms.
Following Cloudflare’s announcement, the Drop Kiwifarms campaign put out a statement: “We’re happy with the decision that Cloudflare came to, and this deals a big blow to Kiwi Farms and their community, one they may never recover from. As long as websites like Kiwi Farms remain active, we’ll keep fighting. Fiberhub, a company based in Las Vegas, is where the servers that host Kiwi Farms are located and serviced. If Kiwi Farms ever becomes active again, we must apply the same pressure to FiberHub that we did to Cloudflare, otherwise the website will return online and be operational in the foreseeable future.”
Kiwi Farms shifts servers
However, as acknowledged by the CEO, kicking Kiwi Farms out of Cloudflare’s infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end. In the past, Cloudflare has also banned similar forums like 8chan and Daily Stormer, but these seem to pop up again leveraging the infrastructure of one of many other hosting and cybersecurity providers available.
It seems like Kiwi Farms has already found itself a new home.
Former FBI Assistant Director, Frank Figliuzzi, tweeted that Kiwi Farms has switched to Russian servers.
The founder of Kiwi Farms, Joshua Moon, is also a former 8chan admin. Meanwhile, a Kiwi Farms user seems to have been charged by the German authorities.
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