JS code at the network edge. Oh, you're still here and not running, screaming? Read on

Bit caching biz Cloudflare on Friday teased website publishers with the prospect of being able to run JavaScript at the edge of its content delivery network, a capability that promises performance, security, and reliability improvements. The outfit puts copies of customers' websites and content at various locations around the …

[Aitor 1]

MITM for hire..

They should go to prison for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: MITM for hire..

It won't be very secure.

[TheVogon]

Re: MITM for hire..

So we can now generate Bitcoins on both the client and server at the same time?

[Kevin McMurtrie]

60% off Rayban Sunglasses

I can't wait to see CloudFlare's scammers take advantage of this new feature. It should really improve the customer experience on all of those impostor stores that they proudly host.

[Adam 52]

It's useful. I use the equivalent feature at Akamai to insert a random number, thereby differentiating otherwise identical cached responses. Makes debugging much easier when you can tell sessions apart.

[really_adf]

"equivalent feature at Akamai"

Adam 52: I use the equivalent feature at Akamai

Also JavaScript, or something else?

As a more general question, what would be a better choice than JS and Service Worker API for what CloudFlare are providing, and why?

Regardless of (endlessly debatable) faults, if the target users are likely to be already familiar with the tools, it does mean less to learn, which surely has some value.

[Comments are attributed to your handle]

Who's got the over-under on how quickly someone will get past the sandboxing?

[Missing Semicolon]

Ad-Block defeater

If the advert selection JS now runs at the Cloudfare boundary, and it's allowed to fetch content from elsewhere, all the ads will seem to be from the main page domain. So the usual ways of binning ads/OutBrain/Taboola will no longer work.

Darn

[Seajay#]

Re: Ad-Block defeater

But that makes click fraud much easier too. If outbrain expects to see loads of requests originate from the cloudflare boundary, and it pays them out as genuine impressions, wouldn't it be easy for a dodgy website to pretend to have served more ads than they have actually sent to end users?