But that's all delicately balanced on trusting the Via headers. If you are under attack from someone malicious then that seems unwise.
It's like relying on the From: header in an e-mail.
It's like relying on the From: header in an e-mail.
If CDN A proxies requests to CDN B and CDN B proxies requests to CDN A then those two will DoS eachother fairly quickly.
There is no attacker inbetween to strip the Via, that would be counterproductive to the attack.
Email has this too; the Received: header. If you manage to get a loop between two MTAs going they will detect it by seeing themselves in the Received: header list.
If. Much, if not most, server software is written under the implicit assumption that it will not be under attack.