Evolution of Privacy Pass at Cloudflare

Deploying privacy-enhancing protocols poses a fundamental challenge in balancing user privacy and abuse prevention. This talk explores the Evolution of Privacy Pass at Cloudflare, focusing on the tensions arising from the desire to protect user privacy while allowing legitimate users through. We will present the Privacy Pass technology, an emerging-standard and widely-deployed solution that addresses these conflicting demands.

This session begins by examining protocols like MASQUE, Oblivious HTTP, and the Distributed Aggregation Protocol, and highlights how Privacy Pass addresses the inherent conflict between user privacy and continuous operation of services. Concrete examples and real-world data will be provided to illustrate the practical benefits and limitations of the protocol.

Additionally, the talk will showcase ongoing developments by the Cloudflare Research team to broaden and extend Privacy Pass, with features and support for new and diverse attestation methods that extend beyond native clients.