To address the issue of managing a Cloudflare blocked IP list, here are the detailed steps to effectively implement and maintain it:

👉 Skip the hassle and get the ready to use 100% working script (Link in the comments section of the YouTube Video) (Latest test 31/05/2025)

Check more on: How to Bypass Cloudflare Turnstile & Cloudflare WAF – Reddit, How to Bypass Cloudflare Turnstile, Cloudflare WAF & reCAPTCHA v3 – Medium, How to Bypass Cloudflare Turnstile, WAF & reCAPTCHA v3 – LinkedIn Article

To manage a Cloudflare blocked IP list, you need to access your Cloudflare dashboard.

Start by logging in at https://dash.cloudflare.com/. Once logged in, navigate to the specific website you wish to configure.

From there, locate and click on the “Security” tab, then select “WAF” Web Application Firewall. Within the WAF section, you’ll find “Tools,” where you can manage your IP Access Rules.

Here, you can add new IP addresses or IP ranges to block, choose whether to block or challenge them, and add notes for better organization.

For bulk operations, consider using Cloudflare’s API, which allows you to programmatically manage large lists of IPs.

You can find comprehensive API documentation at https://developers.cloudflare.com/api/ under the “IP Access Rules” section.

Regularly review your blocked IP list to ensure its effectiveness and remove any entries that are no longer necessary, maintaining optimal site performance and security.

Table of Contents

Understanding Cloudflare’s IP Access Rules

Cloudflare’s IP Access Rules provide a robust mechanism to manage traffic at the network edge, allowing you to define specific actions based on the IP address of incoming requests.

This feature is a cornerstone of proactive security, enabling administrators to block, challenge, or even whitelist IP addresses or ranges.

Think of it as your digital bouncer, deciding who gets in, who gets questioned, and who is outright denied entry.

The Purpose of IP Access Rules

The primary purpose of IP Access Rules is to give you granular control over who can access your website.

This is crucial for mitigating various threats, from targeted attacks by known malicious actors to simply restricting access from specific geographical regions or troublesome networks.

It’s about tailoring your website’s accessibility to your specific security needs.

For instance, if you notice a flurry of suspicious login attempts originating from a particular IP range, blocking that range instantly shuts down that vector of attack.

This proactive approach significantly reduces the load on your origin server, as Cloudflare handles the blocking at the edge, preventing malicious traffic from ever reaching your infrastructure.

Types of Actions: Block, Challenge, Allow

Cloudflare offers several actions you can apply to IP addresses:

Block: This is the most definitive action. Any request originating from a blocked IP address will be immediately dropped by Cloudflare. The user will receive an error page, typically a Cloudflare 1020 error, indicating access is denied. This is ideal for IPs known to be malicious, or for sources from which you absolutely do not want any traffic. For example, if a botnet is hammering your login page, blocking their C2 server’s IP or known attack IPs is essential.
Challenge: This action presents a CAPTCHA or a JavaScript challenge to the visitor. If the challenge is successfully completed, the visitor is allowed access. If not, they are blocked. This is a powerful tool for dealing with suspicious but not definitively malicious traffic, such as automated scrapers or bots that are not yet classified as threats. It acts as a gatekeeper, differentiating between legitimate human visitors and automated scripts. Data shows that challenging suspicious traffic can reduce bot activity by over 70% on average.
Allow: This action whitelists an IP address, ensuring that requests from it bypass certain Cloudflare security checks, including some WAF rules and rate limiting. This is useful for legitimate services or partners who need guaranteed access to your site without interruption. For example, if you have an API that is constantly accessed by a trusted third-party application, allowing their IP ensures smooth operation. However, use “Allow” with caution, as it can inadvertently open up vulnerabilities if the allowed IP becomes compromised.

Global vs. Zone-Specific Rules

Cloudflare allows you to apply IP Access Rules at two levels: Javascript protection

Zone-Specific Per Website: These rules apply only to a particular domain zone within your Cloudflare account. This is the most common use case, allowing you to tailor security policies for each of your websites independently. For example, you might have stricter blocking rules for an e-commerce site than for a personal blog.
Account-Wide Cloudflare Business and Enterprise Plans: For higher-tier plans, you can create IP Access Rules that apply across all zones in your Cloudflare account. This is incredibly useful for organizations managing multiple domains that share common security requirements or face widespread threats from the same sources. If you identify a persistent threat actor targeting all your properties, an account-wide block saves you the hassle of adding the rule to each zone individually. This centralized management simplifies security operations for large enterprises.

Identifying IP Addresses to Block

The effectiveness of your Cloudflare blocked IP list hinges on accurate identification of malicious or unwanted IP addresses. This isn’t a shot in the dark.

It requires strategic monitoring and analysis to ensure you’re blocking threats without inadvertently impacting legitimate users.

Analyzing Your Cloudflare Analytics

Cloudflare’s analytics dashboard is your first port of call.

It provides a wealth of information about your traffic, including:

Threats: Cloudflare automatically detects and logs various threats, such as DDoS attacks, SQL injection attempts, and cross-site scripting XSS. The “Threats” section will show you the IP addresses originating these attacks. Pay close attention to IPs with high threat scores or repeated attack attempts. For example, you might notice hundreds or thousands of requests from a single IP trying to access non-existent pages or repeatedly hitting your /wp-admin login.
Bot Traffic: Cloudflare categorizes bot traffic. While some bots are benign like search engine crawlers, others are malicious spam bots, content scrapers, credential stuffing bots. Look for IPs consistently marked as “Bad Bots” or those exhibiting unusual behavior like high request rates or accessing sensitive areas. Cloudflare’s Bot Management feature, available on higher plans, provides even deeper insights, identifying the specific bot type and its intent.
Traffic Volume: Anomalous spikes in traffic from a specific IP or range can indicate a DDoS attack or an aggressive scraper. Investigate these spikes to determine if the traffic is legitimate or malicious. If an IP sends 10,000 requests in an hour when typical traffic is only 100, it warrants immediate investigation.

Reviewing Server Logs and Access Logs

While Cloudflare provides excellent edge insights, your origin server logs e.g., Apache, Nginx access logs offer a deeper look at what traffic actually reached your server after Cloudflare’s initial filtering.

Error Logs: High numbers of 4xx or 5xx errors originating from a specific IP can indicate a bad actor trying to find vulnerabilities or brute-forcing pages. For instance, if an IP repeatedly gets 404 Not Found errors for non-existent administration URLs, it’s likely probing your server.
Login Attempts: If you run a platform with user accounts, monitor failed login attempts. Multiple failed attempts from the same IP often point to brute-force attacks or credential stuffing. A legitimate user rarely fails login more than 3-5 times consecutively from the same IP within a short period. If you see hundreds, it’s a clear indicator.
Resource Consumption: IPs that cause unusually high CPU, memory, or bandwidth consumption on your server without corresponding legitimate activity might be performing resource exhaustion attacks.

Utilizing Security Tools and Intelligence Feeds

Beyond your own logs, external security tools and intelligence feeds can provide valuable context:

SIEM Systems: If you use a Security Information and Event Management SIEM system, integrate your Cloudflare and server logs into it. SIEMs can correlate events across different systems, helping you identify complex attack patterns and pinpoint malicious IPs more effectively.
Threat Intelligence Platforms: Services like AlienVault OTX, AbuseIPDB, or your ISP’s security reports aggregate known malicious IPs. If an IP address appears on multiple reputable threat intelligence feeds, it’s a strong candidate for your block list. Many of these platforms are updated daily with millions of new malicious IPs detected worldwide.
Community Forums and Blacklists: While not as authoritative as paid intelligence, active security communities and publicly maintained blacklists e.g., Spamhaus, Barracuda Reputation Block List can offer early warnings about emerging threats and shared malicious IPs. Always cross-reference information from these sources with your own data before blocking.

By combining these approaches, you build a comprehensive picture of malicious activity, allowing you to curate a highly effective and targeted Cloudflare blocked IP list.

Step-by-Step Guide to Blocking IPs in Cloudflare

Blocking IP addresses in Cloudflare is a straightforward process once you’ve identified the culprits.

Here’s a detailed, step-by-step guide to implement IP Access Rules in your Cloudflare dashboard.

Accessing IP Access Rules in Cloudflare Dashboard

Log in to Cloudflare: Open your web browser and go to https://dash.cloudflare.com/. Enter your email address and password to log in.
Select Your Website: Once logged in, you’ll see a list of your websites zones. Click on the specific website for which you want to block an IP address.
Navigate to Security: In the left-hand sidebar menu, find and click on “Security.”
Go to WAF: Under the “Security” section, click on “WAF” Web Application Firewall.
Select Tools: Within the WAF page, you’ll see several tabs. Click on “Tools.” This is where you manage your IP Access Rules.

Adding a Single IP Address or Range

Now that you’re in the “Tools” section, you can add new rules: Bypass list proxy

Click “Create an IP Access Rule”: On the “IP Access Rules” page, you’ll see a button, usually labeled “Create an IP Access Rule” or similar. Click it.
Enter IP Address or CIDR: A new modal window will appear. In the “Value” field, enter the IP address you want to block. This can be:
- A single IPv4 address e.g., 192.0.2.1
- An IPv4 range using CIDR notation e.g., 192.0.2.0/24 to block an entire network segment. For IPv6, use 2001:0db8::/32.
- Cloudflare will automatically validate the format.
Select Action: In the “Action” dropdown, choose “Block.” You can also choose “Challenge” or “Allow” depending on your need.
Add a Note Optional but Recommended: In the “Note” field, add a descriptive comment about why you’re blocking this IP. For example, “Repeated login attempts – 2023-10-27” or “Known spam bot source.” This makes your list manageable, especially as it grows.
Choose “Zone” or “All websites in account”: For most users, “This website Zone” will be the default and correct option. If you are on an Enterprise plan and want to apply this rule across all your sites, select “All websites in account.”
Click “Add”: Once all fields are filled, click the “Add” button to create the rule. The rule will instantly become active.

Importing Multiple IPs Enterprise Feature

For users with a large list of IPs to block, manual entry is impractical.

Cloudflare’s Enterprise plans offer an API for bulk operations:

Prepare Your List: Create a plain text file .txt with one IP address or CIDR range per line.
```
192.0.2.1
198.51.100.0/24
203.0.113.5
```
Use Cloudflare API: You’ll need to use the Cloudflare API to upload this list. This typically involves using a scripting language like Python or Node.js and making POST requests to the Cloudflare API endpoint for IP Access Rules.
- API Endpoint: https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/{zone_id}/firewall/access_rules/rules
- Authentication: You’ll need your Cloudflare API key or API token.
- Example Conceptual API Call:
```
POST /client/v4/zones/{zone_id}/firewall/access_rules/rules


Headers: { "X-Auth-Email": "[email protected]", "X-Auth-Key": "your_api_key", "Content-Type": "application/json" }
Body: {
    "mode": "block",


   "configuration": { "target": "ip", "value": "192.0.2.1" },


   "notes": "Blocked via bulk API upload - 2023-10-27"
}
```
You would iterate through your list of IPs, sending a request for each, or craft a single request with multiple rules if the API supports it in a batch.

Refer to Cloudflare’s official API documentation for the most up-to-date and precise methods for bulk uploading.

This method is highly efficient for managing hundreds or thousands of rules.

By following these steps, you can effectively manage your Cloudflare blocked IP list, enhancing your website’s security posture.

Managing Your Cloudflare Blocked IP List

Once you’ve started adding IP addresses to your blocked list, ongoing management is crucial.

This involves reviewing, modifying, and removing rules to ensure your security posture remains optimal and efficient. Log proxy

An unmanaged list can become bloated, less effective, or even cause unintended blocks.

Reviewing and Auditing Existing Rules

Regularly reviewing your IP Access Rules is a best practice.

Think of it like checking your car’s oil – you don’t just set it and forget it.

Access the Rules List: Navigate back to the “Security” -> “WAF” -> “Tools” section in your Cloudflare dashboard. Here, you’ll see a table listing all your existing IP Access Rules.
Examine Each Rule:
- Value: Check the IP address or CIDR range. Is it still relevant?
- Action: Is the chosen action Block, Challenge, Allow still appropriate? Perhaps an IP that was once problematic is now benign, and a “Challenge” might suffice instead of a “Block.”
- Note: Your notes are invaluable here. They provide context on why the rule was created. If a note says “Temporary block for DDoS,” you know to revisit it after the attack subsides.
- Date Created: Older rules might be candidates for review first.
Cross-Reference with Logs: Compare your IP Access Rules with your recent Cloudflare analytics and server logs. Are the blocked IPs still showing up as threats? Are new threats emerging that aren’t on your list?
Schedule Audits: For critical websites, schedule weekly or monthly audits. For less active sites, quarterly might suffice. Consistency is key. Organizations with robust security protocols often audit their firewall rules at least monthly, identifying up to 15-20% of rules that are outdated or unnecessary.

Modifying and Deleting Rules

Situations change, and your IP Access Rules should adapt accordingly.

Modifying a Rule:
- Find the rule you want to modify in the list.
- Click on the “Edit” pencil icon next to the rule.
- A modal window will appear, allowing you to change the IP address/range, action, or note.
- For instance, if an IP was mistakenly blocked, you could change its action from “Block” to “Allow” or “Challenge.”
- Click “Update” to save your changes.
Deleting a Rule:
- Locate the rule you wish to remove.
- Click on the “Delete” trash can icon next to the rule.
- Cloudflare will ask for confirmation. Confirm to remove the rule.
- Why delete? If a threat actor stops targeting you, or if an IP was blocked temporarily, removing the rule keeps your list lean. An overloaded list can sometimes slightly impact performance, though for most users, Cloudflare’s efficiency makes this negligible. More importantly, it reduces the risk of blocking legitimate users inadvertently.

Best Practices for List Maintenance

To ensure your Cloudflare blocked IP list remains effective and manageable:

Be Specific: Whenever possible, block single IPs rather than broad CIDR ranges unless absolutely necessary. Blocking /24 256 IPs or /16 65,536 IPs ranges can inadvertently block innocent users sharing that network segment.
Use Notes Diligently: This cannot be stressed enough. A clear, concise note explaining why an IP was blocked and when is invaluable for future audits. E.g., Blocked: Brute-force login attempts from botnet X - 2023-10-27.
Monitor False Positives: Occasionally, a legitimate user or service might get blocked. Monitor your Cloudflare analytics and user reports for instances of 1020 errors or access issues. If a legitimate IP is blocked, quickly allow it. This is particularly important for APIs or integration partners.
Automate Where Possible: For large enterprises or those dealing with high-volume attacks, consider using Cloudflare’s API to automate the addition and removal of rules based on real-time threat intelligence or internal security alerts. This significantly reduces manual effort.
Tiered Blocking Strategy: Consider a tiered approach. Use “Challenge” for suspicious but not definitively malicious IPs. Reserve “Block” for known bad actors or persistent threats. This balances security with user experience. For example, some organizations initially challenge IPs with a high rate of suspicious requests, and if they persist or engage in further malicious behavior, they are then moved to the block list.
Understand Cloudflare’s Built-in Protections: Remember that Cloudflare’s WAF and DDoS protection are already active. Your custom IP Access Rules complement these, but you don’t need to block every single bad IP. Cloudflare handles many of the obvious threats automatically. Your list should focus on specific, persistent, or highly targeted threats relevant to your site.

By consistently applying these management practices, your Cloudflare blocked IP list will be a powerful and precise tool in your security arsenal.

Impact of IP Blocking on Website Performance and SEO

Implementing Cloudflare’s IP blocking rules is a critical security measure, but it’s important to understand its potential effects on your website’s performance and search engine optimization SEO. Done correctly, the impact is largely positive.

Done carelessly, it can lead to unintended consequences.

Performance Considerations

The good news is that Cloudflare’s IP blocking operates at the network edge, which generally improves performance by preventing malicious traffic from ever reaching your origin server.

Reduced Server Load: By blocking malicious IPs e.g., botnets, brute-force attackers, aggressive scrapers at the Cloudflare edge, your origin server is spared from processing these harmful requests. This frees up server resources CPU, memory, bandwidth for legitimate users, leading to faster response times and improved availability. For high-traffic sites, this reduction can be significant, potentially preventing costly overloads and improving legitimate user experience by up to 30-50% during attack scenarios.
Faster Legitimate Traffic: With fewer malicious requests saturating your network and server, legitimate traffic can flow more freely and quickly. This contributes to lower latency and faster page load times for your actual visitors.
Edge Blocking Efficiency: Cloudflare’s global network is designed for speed. Blocking an IP at the closest Cloudflare data center to the attacker means the malicious request is stopped almost instantly, long before it traverses the internet to your server. This near-instantaneous blocking minimizes any processing overhead on Cloudflare’s side for blocked requests.
Potential for Minor Overhead Rare: While generally positive, maintaining a very large number of individual IP rules hundreds of thousands might introduce a minuscule amount of processing overhead at the edge as Cloudflare checks each incoming request against the rule list. However, for 99% of websites, this impact is negligible compared to the benefits of blocking malicious traffic. Cloudflare’s infrastructure is built to handle massive rule sets efficiently.

SEO Implications Good and Bad

IP blocking can have both positive and negative SEO implications, depending on how it’s managed. List ip cloudflare

Positive SEO Impact:

Improved User Experience: By blocking malicious bots and ensuring your site runs smoothly, you contribute to a better user experience. Fast loading times, high availability, and a secure environment are all factors that search engines like Google consider for ranking. Google’s Core Web Vitals heavily emphasize user experience metrics, and a stable, performant site benefits these.
Reduced Spam/Scraping: Blocking aggressive content scrapers prevents unauthorized duplication of your content, which can sometimes dilute your SEO efforts or lead to duplicate content penalties if not handled correctly.
Clean Logs for Analytics: By filtering out bad bot traffic, your analytics become cleaner and more accurate, providing a truer picture of your legitimate audience and their behavior. This helps in making better data-driven decisions for SEO strategies.
Preventing Negative SEO Attacks: In some cases, competitors might launch negative SEO attacks, such as spammy link building or aggressive crawling, aiming to harm your site’s reputation. Blocking these malicious IPs can help mitigate such attacks.

Negative SEO Impact If Mismanaged:

Blocking Search Engine Crawlers: This is the most critical negative impact. Accidentally blocking legitimate search engine crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, or other reputable bots from specific IP ranges can severely harm your SEO. If Googlebot cannot access your site, it cannot crawl or index your content, leading to de-indexing and a complete loss of search visibility.
- Precaution: Always verify the IP address before blocking, especially if it’s a broad range. Google publishes its crawler IP ranges, which are constantly updated. Cloudflare also has built-in mechanisms to identify and allow legitimate crawlers. Avoid blocking Cloudflare’s internal IPs, as that can break functionality.
Blocking Legitimate Users/Partners: If you mistakenly block an IP address belonging to a significant portion of your legitimate audience or a partner service that relies on your site, it can lead to frustrated users, lost business, and potential negative signals to search engines e.g., high bounce rates from blocked users, though this is less direct.
False Positives on Shared Hosting/VPNs: Many users share IP addresses through large ISPs, VPNs, or corporate networks. Blocking a single IP from such a range might inadvertently block many innocent users. While unavoidable in some cases, it’s a risk to consider.

In summary, judicious use of Cloudflare’s IP blocking features enhances your website’s security and generally contributes positively to performance and SEO by keeping malicious actors at bay. The key is precision and regular auditing to avoid inadvertently impacting legitimate traffic, especially search engine crawlers. Always verify before blocking and maintain detailed notes to ensure the long-term health of your security posture and search rankings.

Cloudflare WAF and Bot Management Integration

Cloudflare’s IP Access Rules are powerful, but they become even more potent when integrated with Cloudflare’s broader security features, particularly the Web Application Firewall WAF and Bot Management.

This layered approach provides comprehensive protection against a wide array of online threats.

How WAF Rules Complement IP Blocking

The Web Application Firewall WAF operates at a different layer of security than simple IP blocking. While IP blocking identifies traffic based solely on its origin, the WAF inspects the content and behavior of HTTP/HTTPS requests.

WAF Rule Sets: Cloudflare’s WAF comes with pre-configured rule sets e.g., Cloudflare Managed Ruleset, OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set designed to detect and mitigate common web vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, RCE, path traversal, and more. These rules examine request headers, body, and URL parameters for malicious patterns.
Layered Defense:
- IP Blocking Layer 3/4: Acts as the first line of defense. If a known bad IP tries to connect, it’s blocked immediately, before its request even reaches the WAF for inspection. This saves processing resources. For instance, if you’ve blocked an IP 192.0.2.1 because it’s a known DDoS source, any request from 192.0.2.1 is dropped instantly.
- WAF Layer 7: If an IP is not explicitly blocked but sends a request containing, say, an SQL injection payload SELECT * FROM users.--, the WAF will detect this malicious pattern and block the request, regardless of the IP’s reputation.
Granular Control: WAF rules can be highly specific. You can create custom WAF rules to block requests based on specific URL paths, user-agent strings, HTTP methods, or request body patterns. For example, you might create a WAF rule to block any request containing the string admin_pannel_login.php if it’s not a legitimate path on your site, or if a user-agent string indicates a known exploit kit. This complements IP blocking by catching sophisticated attacks from IPs that might not yet be on your blacklist.
Example Scenario: An attacker uses a residential IP not on any blacklist to try an SQL injection. IP blocking won’t catch it. The WAF will catch the SQL injection payload. If that same residential IP then initiates a brute-force attack from hundreds of different subnets which would be harder for the WAF to detect behaviorally across multiple requests, you might then add that specific IP or range to your block list.

Cloudflare Bot Management and How It Integrates

Cloudflare Bot Management available on Business and Enterprise plans is a sophisticated feature designed to identify, categorize, and manage all bot traffic – good, bad, and questionable.

It uses machine learning, behavioral analysis, and threat intelligence to differentiate between various types of bots.

Sophisticated Bot Detection: Unlike simple IP Access Rules, Bot Management goes beyond basic IP reputation. It analyzes factors like JavaScript fingerprinting, HTTP header anomalies, request patterns, and even browser automation tools like headless Chrome to accurately identify bots. It can distinguish between Googlebot, a legitimate price comparison bot, and a malicious credential-stuffing bot.
Integration with IP Blocking:
- Dynamic Blocking: Bot Management can automatically recommend or even trigger IP blocking or challenging for IPs identified as sources of particularly egregious bad bot activity e.g., highly aggressive scrapers, brute-force attackers. While you can manually block these IPs, Bot Management adds an automated, intelligence-driven layer.
- Reducing Manual Effort: By effectively managing bots, Bot Management significantly reduces the number of IPs you might need to manually add to your blocked list. If a bot is identified as “Definitely Bad,” Cloudflare can automatically “Block” it, or “Managed Challenge” it without you having to add its IP. This frees up your time to focus on other security aspects.
- Visibility and Reporting: Bot Management provides detailed analytics on bot traffic, showing you the volume of good vs. bad bots, the types of attacks they’re attempting, and their origin IPs. This data is invaluable for refining your IP blocking strategy. You might discover certain IP ranges are consistently home to “Definitely Bad” bots, prompting you to add them to your permanent block list. In Q3 2023, Cloudflare reported that 47% of all internet traffic was automated bot traffic, with “Bad Bots” making up 32% of that. Effective bot management is critical for managing this volume.
Harmony in Action: Consider a scenario: a new botnet emerges. Cloudflare’s Bot Management, leveraging its vast network intelligence, quickly identifies the unique signatures of this botnet. It might initially apply a “Managed Challenge” to traffic from these bots. If the botnet persists or escalates its malicious activity e.g., attempting to bypass challenges, or launching a volumetric attack from specific IPs, Bot Management can then signal to your system or Cloudflare itself can enforce stricter actions, including adding those specific IPs or ranges to your IP Access Rules for immediate “Block.”

In essence, IP blocking provides the foundational “hard block,” WAF rules provide intelligent “payload inspection,” and Bot Management offers “behavioral analysis and dynamic response.” Used together, these Cloudflare features create a formidable defense, allowing you to manage your Cloudflare blocked IP list more strategically and effectively.

Common Pitfalls and Troubleshooting IP Blocking

While Cloudflare’s IP blocking is robust, it’s not immune to errors or misconfigurations.

Understanding common pitfalls and how to troubleshoot them is crucial for maintaining an effective security posture without inadvertently harming your website or legitimate users.

Accidental Blocking of Legitimate Users/Crawlers

This is perhaps the most common and damaging mistake. Tls fingerprints

Pitfall: You block a broad IP range e.g., /16 or /24 CIDR block because one bad actor was within it. This range might belong to a large ISP, a university network, a VPN provider, or even a cloud hosting provider where legitimate users or services are also hosted. Crucially, it could also include IP addresses used by search engine crawlers like Googlebot.
Troubleshooting:
1. Check Cloudflare Audit Logs: If a user reports being blocked Cloudflare error 1020, ask them for their IP address. Go to “Security” -> “Overview” -> “Activity log” in Cloudflare. You can filter by IP address to see if any of your WAF or IP Access Rules triggered a block for that specific IP.
2. Review IP Access Rules: Go to “Security” -> “WAF” -> “Tools.” Carefully review your IP Access Rules, especially any broad CIDR blocks. Does the “Note” explain why it was blocked? Is the reason still valid?
3. Check Cloudflare Analytics: Look at “Analytics & Logs” -> “Traffic.” Filter by IP to see if legitimate traffic patterns from the blocked IP/range have dropped significantly.
4. Verify Googlebot IPs: If you suspect Googlebot is blocked, cross-reference the IP with Google’s published IP ranges for their crawlers. You can also use a reverse DNS lookup to confirm if the IP resolves to googlebot.com or similar. Cloudflare also has built-in features to identify and typically bypass WAF for legitimate search engine crawlers, but manual IP blocks override this.
5. Solution: If a legitimate IP is blocked, modify the rule from “Block” to “Allow” or “Challenge” for that specific IP, or remove the problematic rule altogether if it’s too broad. If it’s a shared IP with only a few bad actors, consider using other Cloudflare features like Rate Limiting or more specific WAF rules instead of a blanket IP block.

Rules Not Taking Effect Instantly

While Cloudflare typically applies rules very quickly, there might be slight delays.

Pitfall: You add a block rule, but you still see traffic from that IP in your origin server logs for a few minutes.
1. Cache/Propagation: Cloudflare’s rules propagate across its global network. While often near-instant, a small delay seconds to a minute or two can occur.
2. Browser Cache: The client might be hitting a cached version of your site or have a cached DNS entry. Ask them to clear their browser cache or try a different browser/device.
3. Origin IP vs. Cloudflare IP: Ensure you’re blocking the client IP as seen by Cloudflare, not your origin server’s IP which is irrelevant for blocking purposes. Cloudflare automatically passes the original client IP in X-Forwarded-For or CF-Connecting-IP headers to your server.
4. Order of Rules: For more complex WAF rule sets, the order of rules can matter. While IP Access Rules are generally processed first, ensure no conflicting rules are overriding your block.
5. Solution: Wait a few minutes. If the issue persists, double-check the rule configuration. If it’s still not working, contact Cloudflare support.

Overly Broad or Narrow Blocking

Striking the right balance is key.

Pitfall – Overly Broad: Blocking a /16 65,536 IPs or /8 over 16 million IPs without absolute certainty. This is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – highly likely to cause collateral damage. This is a common mistake when reacting to a large but short-lived DDoS attack.
Pitfall – Overly Narrow: Only blocking a single IP when the attacker is rotating IPs within a small subnet. You’ll be playing “whack-a-mole” indefinitely.
Troubleshooting & Solution:
1. Analyze Attack Patterns: Is the attack coming from a single IP, a small range, or entirely random IPs? Look at the network segment e.g., 192.0.2.0/24 the attacking IPs belong to.
2. Use CIDR Wisely: If a /24 or /22 1024 IPs range is consistently malicious, blocking it might be appropriate. For very large-scale, distributed attacks, rely on Cloudflare’s automatic DDoS protection and Bot Management rather than manual IP blocking, as they are designed for this.
3. Combine with Rate Limiting: For nuisance bots or light probing from various IPs, consider Cloudflare’s Rate Limiting feature. This allows you to set thresholds e.g., 100 requests from one IP in 60 seconds and then block or challenge exceeding IPs dynamically. This is often more effective than static IP blocking for non-persistent threats.
4. Regular Audits: Regularly review your broad IP blocks. Is the entire range still malicious, or can you narrow it down? Sometimes, a temporary broad block can be replaced with more specific rules or removed once the threat subsides.

By being diligent in these areas, you can effectively use Cloudflare’s IP blocking capabilities while avoiding common pitfalls and maintaining optimal site accessibility and performance.

Alternatives to Cloudflare IP Blocking

While Cloudflare’s IP blocking is a powerful tool, it’s just one part of a comprehensive security strategy.

In many cases, other Cloudflare features or complementary techniques might be more effective or appropriate than a static IP block, especially for dynamic threats or nuanced traffic management.

Cloudflare Rate Limiting

Rate Limiting allows you to control the rate at which requests are made to your website or specific URLs.

Instead of outright blocking an IP forever, you can dynamically challenge or block it only when it exceeds a predefined threshold within a specific timeframe.

How it Works: You define rules based on request URL, HTTP method, IP address, user-agent, or even response codes. For example, “if an IP makes more than 100 requests to /wp-login.php within 5 minutes, block it for 1 hour.”
When to Use:
- Brute-force attacks: Excellent for stopping repeated login attempts.
- Content scraping: Limits how quickly a bot can pull data from your site.
- DDoS mitigation: Helps absorb Layer 7 application layer DDoS attacks by dropping excessive requests.
- API abuse: Prevents clients from overwhelming your API endpoints.
Advantages over Static IP Blocking:
- Dynamic: Adapts to the behavior, not just the IP. A legitimate user who accidentally triggers a threshold will only be temporarily affected.
- Resource-efficient: Prevents excessive requests from consuming your server resources without permanently blacklisting potentially legitimate IPs.
- Granular: Can be applied to specific paths e.g., /api/*, /search, making it more precise than a global IP block.
Example: A static IP block would permanently stop all traffic from 192.0.2.1. Rate Limiting might allow 192.0.2.1 to make 50 legitimate requests, but if it suddenly ramps up to 500 requests in a minute, it gets temporarily blocked or challenged.

Cloudflare WAF Custom Rules

Beyond the standard managed WAF rules, you can create highly specific custom WAF rules to detect and block traffic based on a wider range of criteria than just IP.

How it Works: Custom WAF rules use Cloudflare’s declarative rule language similar to Wireshark filters to match request attributes. You can combine conditions using AND and OR logic.
- Specific attack signatures: Block requests containing particular strings in the URL, header, or body that indicate a known exploit attempt.
- User-agent based blocking: Block specific bad bots or outdated software identified by their user-agent string e.g., User-Agent contains "BadBot/1.0".
- Geoblocking without IP lists: Block traffic from entire countries without maintaining IP lists. Cloudflare’s WAF has a built-in ip.geo.country eq "RU" filter for this.
- HTTP header anomalies: Block requests with missing or malformed headers common in automated attacks.
- Behavioral: Catches attacks based on their content and characteristics, not just their origin IP. Attackers often rotate IPs, but their attack payload might remain consistent.
- Flexible: Can be tailored to very specific threats relevant to your application.
- Scalable: You write one rule that applies to all matching traffic, rather than manually listing every possible attacking IP.

Cloudflare Bot Management Advanced Tier

For organizations facing sophisticated automated threats, Cloudflare’s Bot Management solution offers a superior alternative to manual IP blocking.

How it Works: Uses machine learning, behavioral analysis, and threat intelligence gathered across Cloudflare’s vast network to accurately classify bot traffic. It can distinguish between beneficial bots search engines, questionable bots scrapers, crawlers, and malicious bots DDoS, credential stuffing, spam.
- High volume bot traffic: If a significant portion of your traffic is automated and impacting resources.
- Credential stuffing and account takeover ATO attempts: Identifies and mitigates these attacks.
- Content scraping and intellectual property theft: Protects your valuable content from automated extraction.
- Intelligent & Dynamic: Doesn’t rely on static IP lists. It learns and adapts to new bot techniques.
- Granular Actions: Can apply different actions to different bot categories: “Allow” good bots, “Managed Challenge” questionable bots, and “Block” malicious bots, all automatically.
- Proactive: Identifies emerging bot threats across the Cloudflare network before they explicitly target your site.

While static IP blocking remains a useful tool for known, persistent threats from specific IPs, these Cloudflare alternatives offer more dynamic, intelligent, and scalable solutions for managing the complex world of web traffic and automated attacks. Https bypass

Often, a combination of these strategies provides the most robust defense.

Cloudflare’s Approach to Security and Protecting User Data

Cloudflare’s core mission revolves around making the internet safer, faster, and more reliable for everyone.

This commitment extends deeply into how they handle security and protect user data, operating under a philosophy that balances robust defense mechanisms with user privacy and ethical data practices.

As a Muslim professional, understanding these foundational principles is important, as they align with broader values of security, trustworthiness, and responsible conduct.

Data Security and Privacy Principles

Privacy by Design: Cloudflare integrates privacy considerations into the design of its products and services from the outset. This means thinking about data minimization, transparency, and user control at every stage of development.
GDPR and Global Compliance: Cloudflare is deeply committed to complying with global privacy regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, and other emerging data protection laws worldwide. They offer specific features and contractual terms to assist their customers in meeting their own compliance obligations.
Data Minimization: Cloudflare aims to collect and process only the data strictly necessary to provide its services. For instance, while they log request metadata for security and performance optimization, they generally do not log sensitive user content unless explicitly configured by the customer for specific security features.
Transparency: Cloudflare publishes a Transparency Report annually, detailing government requests for user data and other legal processes. This commitment to transparency is a testament to their dedication to accountability.
Encryption In Transit and At Rest: All communication between Cloudflare and its customers and between Cloudflare’s network and origin servers is typically encrypted using TLS/SSL. Furthermore, data stored on Cloudflare’s infrastructure is also subject to encryption measures.
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies: Cloudflare actively invests in and develops privacy-enhancing technologies like Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS ODoH, which helps separate DNS queries from user IP addresses, further enhancing anonymity.

Protecting Against Malicious Actors

Cloudflare’s entire infrastructure is designed to act as a shield against malicious actors.

Their large-scale network allows them to identify and mitigate threats that individual organizations would struggle to counter.

DDoS Protection: Cloudflare automatically detects and mitigates DDoS attacks of all sizes and types Layer 3, 4, and 7. They have absorbed some of the largest DDoS attacks ever recorded, preventing them from reaching customer origin servers. Their network capacity is designed to handle tens of terabits per second of attack traffic.
Web Application Firewall WAF: As discussed, the WAF protects against common web vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and more. This is a crucial layer of defense for web applications.
Bot Management: By intelligently identifying and categorizing bots, Cloudflare helps customers distinguish between legitimate and malicious automated traffic, allowing them to apply appropriate actions.
Threat Intelligence: Leveraging their vast network and billions of daily requests, Cloudflare maintains a continuously updated threat intelligence database. This allows them to proactively block new attack vectors, known malicious IPs, and emerging threats as soon as they are identified across their network. Over 100 billion cyber threats are blocked daily by Cloudflare’s systems.
Secure Access Zero Trust: For enterprise customers, Cloudflare offers Zero Trust solutions Cloudflare One that secure access to internal applications and networks, ensuring that only authenticated and authorized users and devices can connect, regardless of location. This moves beyond traditional perimeter-based security, aligning with a principle of “never trust, always verify.”

Cloudflare’s commitment to security and privacy is not just a marketing slogan.

It’s deeply embedded in their technological architecture and operational practices.

Their ability to protect against a vast array of online threats while upholding strong privacy standards makes them a trusted partner for safeguarding online assets, and this aligns with the principles of trustworthiness and protection of privacy often emphasized in Islamic teachings.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Cloudflare blocked IP list?

A Cloudflare blocked IP list is a set of IP addresses or IP ranges that you have configured within your Cloudflare account to prevent from accessing your website. Your browser

When a request comes from an IP on this list, Cloudflare’s edge network will immediately drop the request, preventing it from reaching your origin server.

How do I add an IP to the blocked list in Cloudflare?

To add an IP, log in to your Cloudflare dashboard, select your website, go to “Security” > “WAF” > “Tools.” Click “Create an IP Access Rule,” enter the IP address or CIDR range, select “Block” as the action, add an optional note, and click “Add.”

Can I block an entire country using Cloudflare?

Yes, you can block an entire country using Cloudflare.

This is done via Cloudflare’s WAF Custom Rules available on Business and Enterprise plans or through “IP Access Rules” by selecting the “Country” field.

For example, you can create a rule that blocks all traffic from ip.geo.country eq "RU".

What happens when an IP is blocked by Cloudflare?

When an IP is blocked by Cloudflare, any request originating from that IP address will be immediately denied at Cloudflare’s edge network.

The user typically receives a Cloudflare 1020 error page, indicating “Access Denied” or “Access Blocked.”

How long does it take for an IP block to take effect?

Cloudflare IP blocks usually take effect almost instantly, propagating across their global network within seconds to a couple of minutes.

Once the rule is saved, it’s enforced very quickly.

Can I block multiple IP addresses at once?

Yes, you can block multiple IP addresses at once. For a few IPs, you can add them individually. Automated endpoint management

For a large number of IPs, Cloudflare’s API available on Enterprise plans allows for bulk uploading of IP access rules, which is the most efficient method for managing extensive lists.

How do I remove an IP from the blocked list?

To remove an IP, go to your Cloudflare dashboard, select your website, navigate to “Security” > “WAF” > “Tools.” Find the specific IP Access Rule in the list, click the “Delete” trash can icon next to it, and confirm the deletion.

Will blocking IPs affect my website’s SEO?

Blocking malicious or unwanted IPs generally has a positive impact on SEO by improving site performance and security.

However, accidentally blocking legitimate search engine crawlers like Googlebot can severely harm your SEO by preventing your site from being indexed. Always verify IPs before blocking.

Can I block an IP temporarily?

Yes, you can manage temporary blocks.

Cloudflare’s IP Access Rules do not have a built-in expiry time.

To make a block temporary, you would manually add the rule and then manually remove it once the threat or situation has passed.

Alternatively, consider using Cloudflare Rate Limiting for dynamic, temporary blocks based on request thresholds.

What is the difference between blocking and challenging an IP?

Blocking an IP completely denies access, showing an error page.

Challenging an IP presents a CAPTCHA or a JavaScript challenge to the visitor. Ids detection

If the challenge is successfully completed, the visitor is allowed access. otherwise, they are blocked.

Challenging is useful for suspicious but not definitively malicious traffic.

Can I see who is blocked by Cloudflare?

Yes, Cloudflare’s analytics and activity logs can show you blocked requests.

Go to “Security” > “Overview” or “Analytics & Logs” > “Traffic” in your dashboard.

You can filter by action e.g., “blocked” to see which IPs were blocked by your WAF or IP Access Rules.

Is there a limit to how many IPs I can block?

Cloudflare’s plans have varying limits on the number of IP Access Rules you can create.

For most standard plans, the limit is often in the hundreds or thousands.

Enterprise plans have significantly higher limits or allow for bulk management via API, effectively making the practical limit much higher.

Refer to your specific plan’s details for exact numbers.

Should I block residential IP addresses?

Blocking residential IP addresses should be done with extreme caution. Cloudflare cookie policy

Residential IPs are typically used by legitimate users, and blocking them can inadvertently block many innocent visitors.

Only block a residential IP if you have strong evidence of persistent malicious activity from that specific address and if alternatives like Rate Limiting or WAF rules are insufficient.

How do I troubleshoot if a legitimate user is blocked?

First, ask the user for their IP address.

Then, check your Cloudflare Activity Log under “Security” > “Overview” to see if any WAF or IP Access Rules triggered a block for that IP.

Review your IP Access Rules for any broad ranges that might have caught the user.

If confirmed, modify or remove the rule to allow their access.

Does Cloudflare automatically block known bad IPs?

Yes, Cloudflare automatically blocks a vast number of known malicious IPs through its internal threat intelligence system and its core DDoS protection and WAF functionalities.

Your custom IP Access Rules complement these automatic protections, allowing you to block specific threats targeting your site that might not yet be on Cloudflare’s global blacklists.

Can I block IP ranges using CIDR notation?

Yes, Cloudflare allows you to block IP ranges using CIDR Classless Inter-Domain Routing notation, such as 192.0.2.0/24 for IPv4 or 2001:0db8::/32 for IPv6. This is essential for blocking entire subnets associated with persistent threats.

What’s the best way to manage a large blocked IP list?

For large lists, the best way to manage them is through Cloudflare’s API. Tls browser

This allows for programmatic addition, modification, and deletion of rules, making it efficient for integrating with external threat intelligence feeds or automating responses to large-scale attacks. Regular auditing is also critical.

Will blocking an IP hide my content from that IP?

Yes, blocking an IP will prevent requests from that IP address from reaching your website and thus effectively hide your content from them as they will receive an error page instead.

What are some alternatives to IP blocking for managing unwanted traffic?

Alternatives include Cloudflare’s Rate Limiting to control request thresholds, Cloudflare WAF Custom Rules to block based on request characteristics like user-agent or payload, Cloudflare Bot Management for intelligent bot identification and action, and managing your site’s access through authentication and authorization layers if it’s a private resource.

How can I make sure I don’t block search engine bots?

Cloudflare generally recognizes and allows legitimate search engine bots.

To avoid accidentally blocking them, never block broad IP ranges indiscriminately.

If you must block a range, verify that it does not include known search engine crawler IPs.

Cloudflare’s cf.client.bot field in WAF rules can also help differentiate legitimate bots.

Cloudflare blocked ip list