Virtual Sweatshops Defeat Bot-or-Not Tests
Summary: Krebs on Security reports that CAPTCHA-solving services such as KolotiBablo.com and its client-facing site antigate.com employ 500 to 1,000 workers, mostly in China, India, Pakistan and Vietnam, to solve live CAPTCHAs fed through an API for clients paying 70 cents to $1 per 1,000 puzzles. Workers earn $0.35 to $1 per thousand solved and are expected to answer each puzzle in under 10 seconds, which works out to roughly $2.88 a day at six puzzles a minute over an eight-hour shift.
Bottom line: CAPTCHA was meant to separate humans from bots, and this market keeps it ineffective against automated account creation and spam because there is a standing pool of low-cost human labor to solve the puzzles instead. The operators themselves say they do not condone spam, yet the services are advertised and recommended on underground forums that cater to spammers and scammers.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
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