Cool new CAPTCHA hack
The CAPTCHA Project at CMU defines CAPTCHAs as a program that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. CAPTCHAs are used to protect things from programmatic abuse (think spam). Not a bad idea, but I just got a note from Bryce Jasmer describing a cool new way to defeat them:
I just heard a story about some system that someone has created in order to pass the turing tests and create thousands of spam launching email addresses at hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.
You create a website with a bunch of porn on it. You serve up an image at the same time you try to try to create a yahoo email account. You snag the touring test image, put it on your page of porn and have the user type in the results in order to see the next porn image. You take the result and feed it back to yahoo, and you have your automatically created account.
