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Hey Kizyr...

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:17 am
by Werefrog
Have you seen this article yet?
<a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7067962.stm> Spambots are using people to answer Captcha prompts.</a> And they're doing it through porn!! People won't be able to resist. The spambots are coming!

BTW, I put this here on the L-Net board since it fits in with Kizyr's attempt to keep L-Net free from spam. If you want to move it to Almost Anything Goes, feel free to.

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 7:27 am
by Erroneous
I don't see how this relates to us as it's geared towards Yahoo's authentication systems and not over phpBB's. Overall I can tell you regardless of what systems are being used, hackers will always expand and adapt to the modern systems of personal privacy and find ways to exploit them. This is no new information nor any cause for alarms either.

I operate this phpBB's installment and have taken precautions in the registration and login process for this forum by expanding it's everyday already known functions into further security measures when I established things back last year. If this board itself were to be compromised, it wouldn't be done in by a standard hacking exploit, someone specifically would have to actually attempt to adjust their bots to navigate through the security features or find other possible exploits to cause troubles.

Though the chances of someone that bored, with that much free time, that kind of motivation, and the knowledge is slim as you can tell this site has been hacked free for years. To do so would require some time and efforts to break through; all by which time used that can also be used to quickly change and build more barriers to prevent them from being exploited.

And what does get broken, can be restored. So all in all, it's just an inconvenience.

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 8:09 am
by DevNall
I'm not really sure that this is new, I mean I heard about it (in class) back in '01.

Frankly, though, captchas aren't really a problem for spammers anyway -- I help maintain a very large board and there are Russian software programs that can post a message on thousand of forums, and captchas and email verification pose no problem. Here's an example: http://www.botmaster.net/movies/XFull.htm

Also, you can pay people in certain poor countries to spam for you when it is a problem to automate.

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 3:37 pm
by Werefrog
DevNall wrote:I'm not really sure that this is new, I mean I heard about it (in class) back in '01.

...

Also, you can pay people in certain poor countries to spam for you when it is a problem to automate.
I didn't know that this existed in the past. However, I'm thinking that the new thing is that this program reinforces the behavior by rewarding the user with pictures. Should make it more effective and probably spread faster.

I wonder how much professional spammer would pay? That sounds like it would be a very rewarding job.

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 6:39 pm
by DevNall
Werefrog wrote:I didn't know that this existed in the past. However, I'm thinking that the new thing is that this program reinforces the behavior by rewarding the user with pictures. Should make it more effective and probably spread faster.
Well, slightly different, apparently it was being done at porn sites or something along those lines -- but the captchas would actually come from somewhere else.
Werefrog wrote:I wonder how much professional spammer would pay? That sounds like it would be a very rewarding job.
I don't know specifically, but probably not a lot USD... however, in some poorer parts of the world, it might not be a bad gig compared to some of your alternatives.

Re: Hey Kizyr...

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:39 am
by Kizyr
I just... found it a bit funny that this topic was addressed to me, but I never even gave a response.

On that note, this new CAPTCHA approach is awesome. Nearly all human registers so far. KF