Captchabot: Blurring Human and Machine
Summary: Captchabot.com, a client of a bulletproof hosting provider, automates CAPTCHA solving using low-paid workers in China, India and Eastern Europe, charging about $1 for 1,000 solved CAPTCHAs with a claimed 80 percent success rate. Its owner, a hacker named Mirko Res, said most of his workers live in Belarus and that workers only receive puzzles the service's automated algorithm cannot solve, while UC San Diego researchers estimated the service would need between 130 and 200 workers around the clock.
What's compelling: At roughly $1 per 1,000 solved puzzles, mass bogus account creation on sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube costs almost nothing, and the same service supplies CAPTCHA-cracking to tools like XRumer and a $10 Verified by Visa checker used against stolen card numbers.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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