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Yahoo CAPTCHA Hacked

Posted by kdawson on from the leap-and-frog dept.

Hell Yeah! reminds us of a 2-week-old development that somehow escaped notice here. A team of Russian hackers has found a way to decipher a Yahoo CAPTCHA, thought to be one of the most difficult, with 35% accuracy. The Russian group's notice, posted by one "John Wane," is dated January 16. This site hosts a rapidshare link to what looks to be demonstration software for Windows, and quotes the Russian researchers: "It's not necessary to achieve high degree of accuracy when designing automated recognition software. The accuracy of 15% is enough when attacker is able to run 100,000 tries per day, taking into the consideration the price of not automated recognition — one cent per one CAPTCHA."

7 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. I thought those things were already broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    by having a teenage boy do it in exchange for letting him see porn.

    1. Re:I thought those things were already broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't know exactly how large porn images are, never having looked at them.

      Posting on /. and you've never seen porn? Bullshit.

    2. Re:I thought those things were already broken by nb+caffeine · · Score: 3, Funny

      Maybe he only watches movies

      --

      "Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
  2. Hey by Misanthrope · · Score: 5, Funny

    They're used to seeing Cyrillic, the captcha has got to be easier to read!

  3. Re:Gentlemen, start your spambots by SoupGuru · · Score: 5, Funny

    That reminds me of the age check for Leisure Suit Larry back in the day... Who knew that the desire of a horny teen to see pixellated boobs would lead to history research?

    --
    What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
  4. Re:Malware by wellingtonsteve · · Score: 4, Funny

    without a chord is fine... ...it's when you're missing a cord that you need to worry

  5. Re:Gentlemen, start your spambots by aliquis · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just put some hard to read perl code in there and ask the user to say what it does. If the answer is correct it's a bot, if the answer is wrong it's probably a human ;)