Spam Bots and CAPTCHAs

You’ve probably heard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); it’s is an “international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.

According to their web site, their mission is:

“To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.”

Well, lately they have been working hard to lead the web away from CAPTCHA, and with good reason. According to this article on their web site, CAPTCHA is giving webmasters a “false sense of security.”

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CAPTCHA routines are kind of like the flesh-eating dudes in those zombie flicks. They’re dead, but someone forgot to tell them. Well, the obituary was been written for CAPTCHA long ago, but the concept continues to live. Now, it seems, the word is finally starting to spread and more and more webmasters are starting to show up for the funeral.

CAPTCHA, or more precisely Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, uses images to try and stop spammers. The problem is, the spammers have written some darn good image recognition software and that’s when CAPTCHA’s death knoll sounded.

So, what is it that the spam slayers are starting to support? SAPTCHA (Semi Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart).

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Evil spammers and renegade programmers aren’t who you think they are. Sure, both types of Internet abusers can trace their origins back to random individuals who weren’t commercially organized and whose actions didn’t really cause a huge ripple effect across the ‘Net. But all of that has changed.

Today’s virus attacks are written by professional software developers who charge fees to buyers who want to release their own spam, virus or Trojan horse attack. Developers sell plug-and-play “instant virus outbreaks” and root kits that can be purchased and downloaded online. Organized crime cartels from around the world have sunk their claws into the Internet and they’re making billions of dollars per year running their spam networks and phishing sites.

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Just stumbled upon the article “Using AI to beat CAPTCHA and post comment spam”. There is a number of projects related to breaking CAPTCHAs and a number of articles on the topic, but this article strikes me most, because of:

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For all the havoc spambots wreak on blogs their presence has actually done some good. You see, these annoying creatures from cyberspace have brought out the creative sides of blog owners determined to win this Battle of the Blogs.

To make my point read this post by Ned Batchelder titled,

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While poking around the Internet I came across this article about ways to stop PHPBB spam. In it the author talks about 2 tools he believes everyone running a phpBB board needs. What’s nice about the article is that it isn’t a cleverly disguised plug for these products. Instead it’s an independent review so you can be sure these products really work.

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