Gotcha, CAPTCHA! Gmail bot detector system cracked

jmke · 27th February 2008, 23:06

Google's free e-mail services and a highly-desirable gmail.com domain—one that is unlikely to be blacklisted by anybody's spam filters—are just two of the features that induced spammers to crack the CAPTCHA and have bots do all the work. On the upside, it apparently wasn't easy—Websense says that it required two bot hosts to crack instead of just the one that recently cracked Windows Live Mail's CAPTCHA (Websense believes that the same group was involved with both). It also believes that the two hosts are required because the first host may fail at cracking the code the first time around (and possibly time out), but the second host may also be required to check the work of the first. Additionally, only one in every five CAPTCHA-breaking requests on Gmail succeeded. Still, a 20 percent success rate is relatively high when you consider that spambots are trying to register hundreds (or thousands) of e-mail addresses at a time.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...m-cracked.html

jmke · 27th February 2008, 23:07

Our forum account registration CAPTCHA has not been "cracked" yet

no bots have registered since its introduction; only human spammers remain, but they are dealt with quickly

27th February 2008, 23:06	#1
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	Gotcha, CAPTCHA! Gmail bot detector system cracked Google's free e-mail services and a highly-desirable gmail.com domain—one that is unlikely to be blacklisted by anybody's spam filters—are just two of the features that induced spammers to crack the CAPTCHA and have bots do all the work. On the upside, it apparently wasn't easy—Websense says that it required two bot hosts to crack instead of just the one that recently cracked Windows Live Mail's CAPTCHA (Websense believes that the same group was involved with both). It also believes that the two hosts are required because the first host may fail at cracking the code the first time around (and possibly time out), but the second host may also be required to check the work of the first. Additionally, only one in every five CAPTCHA-breaking requests on Gmail succeeded. Still, a 20 percent success rate is relatively high when you consider that spambots are trying to register hundreds (or thousands) of e-mail addresses at a time. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...m-cracked.html __________________

27th February 2008, 23:07	#2
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	Our forum account registration CAPTCHA has not been "cracked" yet no bots have registered since its introduction; only human spammers remain, but they are dealt with quickly __________________

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