Understanding How CAPTCHA Is Broken

An anonymous reader writes "Websense Security Labs explains the spammer Anti-CAPTCHA operations and mass-mailing strategies. Apparently spammers are using combination of different tactics — proper email accounts, visual social engineering, and fast-flux — representing a strategy, explains their resident CAPTCHA expert. It is evident that spammers are working towards defeating anti-spam filters with their tactics."

Comments

Really?

[Nimloth]

"It is evident that spammers are working towards defeating anti-spam filters with their tactics."
Sounds like news to me!

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Websense could start up their own form of CAPTCHA - white text on white background... After all, their site is VIRTUALLY there...
God, how I hate these Web 2.0 retards who have to copy every other shite looking site on the internet, because it 'looks good' - what a shame they have never heard of the word CONTRAST. Arrogant wankers.

Captchas

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to post an insightful comment about the article, but I've wasted so much time trying to figure out Slashdot's captcha to post this message, that I no longer have the time.

This is getting silly.

[Asztal_]

Next time I'm just going to demand that anyone who wants to register for my site will have to send me a formal written request, signed and dated, with at least two good references and a registration history.

That should keep the bots out, right?

Re:My spam rules--

[Yvan256]

Wow.... all of those rules, and you end your post with your email address.

Re:I guess I've gotten used to it

[Nushio]

Or in any country with a mature wireless industry for that matter.
Wooh! Mexico is a country with mature wireless industries! (We don't pay to receive SMS)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Page design

[Anonymous Coward]

Whose bright idea was it to use light grey text on a white background?

You're not missing much anyway, that article was so poorly written, I found myself cheering for the spammers by the time it was through.

Re:My spam rules--

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, Anonymous Coward here again, I made a typo. It's actually malda@slashdot.org

Can it break RapidShare's upcoming CAPTCHA? ;)

[antdude]

Digg shares several amusing doctored screen shots of RapidShare's CAPTCHAs that might be shown in the future.