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CloudFlare Working On New System That Removes CAPTCHAs For Tor Users (softpedia.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-things dept.

Tor users have long criticized CloudFlare for annoying CAPTCHAs, but it appears the CDN provider is finally working on a fix. An anonymous reader writes: CloudFlare is working on a new system called "Challenge Bypass Specification," which it wants to deploy as a Tor Browser extension and replace the CAPTCHAs Tor users see when trying to access a website protected by CloudFlare. This new system will have users solve one CAPTCHA at the beginning and after that, the browser extension will use nonces (one-time authentication tokens) to prove the user's real identity before accessing a CloudFlare-protected site.

1 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Ok, guilty. by poofmeisterp · · Score: -1, Troll

    Read subject of comment ^^

    I'm guilty of not reading the article. I don't have to because in the summary I see "a Tor Browser extension" and stopped.

    What the eff? That completely defeats the purpose of having something that's not "trackable". It could very well be an extension that phones home the activity of the user to a government entity so they can catch more of the REALLY bad guys - that being whatever's on the menu of good catch this week/month/whatever. If it were open source, it's still BS because you KNOW most people that use Tor aren't developers and aren't going to set up an environment to compile an extension to ensure every line of it is clean. Let alone what it sends to CAPTCHA to work around the problem; doing so can be used to easily identify who is using Tor to make them a target rather than the exit nodes or whatever they're called now.