Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I haven't been able to access archive.today in a good long while. Cloudflare's challenge page lets me solve a captcha, but doesn't actually remember that I've solved it. So I'm in an endless loop of challenge pages.

If you're wondering, I'm on Firefox connected thru Google Fiber. I've tried disabling Enhanced Tracking Protection, but all that does is make it so I don't have to solve a captcha. I still get the endless loop of challenge pages.

Broken for me too. Firefox but through Xfinity. Edit: also broken on Chrome.

Works fine in Brave in MacOS 12.7.1.

DNS related. Cloudflare, in particular, gets fed incorrect results from archive.ph. I'm not sure they're the only ones, I've also had loops when using 8.8.8.8. But in any case, try a different resolver and it'll probably clear up the captcha loop.

This happens if you use 1.1.1.1 as your DNS resolver, the result of a long-running dispute between Cloudflare and Archive.is[1]; searching HN for “archive cloudflare” will get you lots of discussion.

As I understand it: the technical cause is that the Archive.is authoritative DNS server refuses to respond correctly to requests without EDNS subnet information, and Cloudflare’s resolver refuses to send requests with it. (Cloudflare says this is for privacy reasons, and I believe Archive.is says their response is for legal reasons.) The captcha loop seems to be a recent development; apparently[2] it’s not actually from Cloudflare, just styled to look like it.

[1] https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38174302

Sooooo the weird thing for me is that I never actually used 1.1.1.1, and it's not in my DNS. archive.today loads correctly in Chrome without a problem so I suspect Firefox is just using 1.1.1.1 over DoH or something.

Appears so.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/privacy/cloudflare...

> To counter such threats, Mozilla has partnered with Cloudflare to provide direct DNS resolution from within the Firefox browser using the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox. What this means is that whenever you select or type a web address in the Firefox browser your DNS lookup request will be sent over a secure channel to the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox rather than to an unknown DNS resolver, significantly decreasing the odds of any unwanted spying or man in the middle attacks.

That might just be the case. You can try switching to NextDNS within Firefox's settings.

I've been getting the same behavior while using google DNS (8.8.8.8). Is this the same dispute somehow?

Other talked about the reasons, but I just want to point it's not Cloudflare - they always put their logo on all the pages, but that captcha page is missing any logos of any sort.

(Plus, since last month, Cloudflare no longer has captchas at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37799413)

Are you using Cloudfare DNS (1.1.1.1)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970702

Reply on news.ycombinator.com