Stanford researchers say that captcha security codes, asking Internet sign-up users to repeat a string of letters to prove the users are human, can be thwarted, and they have successfully defeated captcha at big name sites such as Visa, CNN, and eBay as proof. In fact, they found that thirteen out of 15 high-profile sites were vulnerable to automated attacks.
Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. This is a test that a Carnegie Mellon University computer science graduate student and his advisor created in 2000 as a security tool to safeguard web sites from automated bot attacks and spammers.
Simply put, the test was supposed to be passable by humans, not machines. The Stanford team, however, found that its own anti-spam tool-breaker was able to kill off captcha’s protective cover.
Google and reCAPTCHA were the only two that beat out the Stanford team’s automated tool--no gotchas for either one. What’s more, Visa’s Authorize.net and Digg have switched to reCAPTCHA since these tests were performed.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
