Everyone in aware of Completely Automated Public Turning test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. (CAPTCHA), the distorted image you see while registering a account. Making CAPTCHA sound easy, a image seen at the end of a sign-up page wherein alphanumerical are used like a 3 year old kid has written it to protect the website from spammers. This has proved to be good at holding back spammers. But a simple code created by a group of hackers claim they their bot can crack the CAPTCHA used in Windows Live Mail in mere 60 seconds.
Making matters more worse, Websense Security Labs state that the CAPTCHA used in Windows Live mail have been changing but time taken for a bot to decipher a text is mere 6-8 seconds. This automatic bot spreads like a malware in the Internet Explorer which uses the host’s computer to create new accounts. Well calulations state that a CAPTCHA can create 1,400+ news per day. Now why hackers target live.com and hotmail.com? Simple these are the common website which would never get blacklisted even if spammers target them.
I don’t know how secure these CAPTCHA’s can be, they can’t be a foolproof solution for ever growing spammers. Google, Microsoft and all other websites use CAPTCHA , to make it their websites secure. Changing the algorithm or the images can only give a temporary solution. The bots will be modified to make them work faster. Lets hope some drastic measures are taken to extend a hand towards more secure websites and giving Spam a Exit Command.
Pingback: Rapidshare’s immediate action for CAPTCHA bot | tftb.net