Cloudflare Security Check
Recently, a friend in our group chat encountered an error while filling out a waitlist form on manus and thought it was a site issue. After investigating, I found it was actually a Cloudflare issue. Once the problem was identified, it was easy to solve. I used my proxy node to help fill out the form. This small issue highlights how many people are unaware of Cloudflare’s security checks, so I’ll briefly summarize it here.
Cloudflare Security Check Results
The screenshots above show Cloudflare’s security check page on the manus website. Figure 1 shows success, Figure 2 shows failure.
For websites that use Cloudflare, when accessing them, Cloudflare performs security checks. If the check fails, it can prevent further operations, such as form submissions.
What Does the Security Check Verify?
- Basic security validation
- Bot detection
- Threat intelligence checks
- DDoS protection checks And more. Simply put, issues like problematic IP addresses can also cause the check to fail.
Things to note:
- If you’re accessing from mainland China, you may need to use a proxy since many CF IPs are blocked by the Great Firewall
- Some normal proxies or VPNs might trigger CF’s security checks
- The strictness of the checks can be adjusted by the site owner in the CF control panel
How to Resolve Security Check Issues as a User
- Change proxy nodes. If you’re in China, you need to use a proxy because many CF IPs are blocked.
For example, in my Surge configuration, I have the following rule to route Cloudflare traffic through a specific proxy node:
DOMAIN-SUFFIX,cloudflare.com,Final-select
Final Thoughts
This provides a basic understanding of Cloudflare’s security checks. Since my personally hosted sites still need to serve users in China, I’m not considering using Cloudflare for now.
