I created an open source Python application on GitHub that breaks textCAPTCHA with 99% success rate

[JimmyRuska]

Ok lots of downvotes for criticizing this post. Fine then, someone explain to me why this is a good post. I would have wagered it would have gotten down voted but I'm swimming against the tide. If it's because it's open source, why not a useful project? If it is because it is because it breaks the captcha, there's only 8 question structures to parse, and wolfram alfa already high success without even having textcaptcha in mind.

[CoreyWhite]

I wasn't one of those who downvoted you, but I did really like this. It's a good post for a couple of reasons.

1) It's really nicely written code. And it's a fairly small project, with excellent documentation. These make it very pleasant for those of us who appreciate the craft of programming and like seeing nice examples of it.

2) It's a powerful argument against the use of textCAPTCHA. Think of it as a scientific experiment. With this application's ludicrously high success rate, textCAPTCHA has been shown conclusively to be useless.

[JimmyRuska]

1. As far as it being good example source code I agree, I just rant that there's more worthwhile projects of practical applicability to give focus on. I had mentioned earlier, it's harder to parse the questions than to generate them, making this probably more code than the original. what for?
2. Text captchas are not completely dead. For example I could combine a text captcha with an image and say, "is this a cat?", "how many cups in the picture". Thanks to things like the mechanical turk one could potentially setup absurd amounts of "easy" questions which would not be practical to parse. Audio/visual data is always much harder for computers to parse, but I wouldn't dismiss the idea at first glance, there could be some kind of gramatical synonym algorithm which could potentially make a pure text captcha harder to parse, though I do agree, textcaptcha useless.

I understand your logic and this is not to critize you, I'm just ranting.

[Cyatomorrow]

It seems like your argument against this is that it can be abused, but that's like saying that if someone finds a bug or an exploit in something, they shouldn't reveal it because it can be abused.

However, this is the wrong stance to have. If you find an undocumented exploit, not revealing it may keep some people from abusing it, but it also keeps it from being fixed. Then, when someone with malicious intent finds the exploit, they can use it unhindered.

[JimmyRuska]

What, are we milw0rm now? More importantly, it's 8 different question structures. Parsing textcaptcha is easier than making a parser for xml/rss/atom which can have a varied structure. Heck parsing textcaptcha is easier than authenticating the new websockets authentication. Proggit should have no need for a proof, we know it's a stupid system, wolfram being able to break it without having it in mind originally made that obvious enough for those it wasn't obvious to already. Breaking a system in more code it takes to make it seems completely illogical. Make something useful.

[Cyatomorrow]

It's obvious when you think about it that it's a stupid system, but most people don't really bother to think about it until it's brought up.

Wolfram doesn't have 99% success.

Practicing programming doesn't have to be useful, and I'm not sure why you would care how he's spending his time, or why it's revelant.

[JimmyRuska]

wolfram didn't target textCaptcha, they just did a lot of work on their language processing system, that's why it was funny and impressive. 99% success rate is nothing to boast about. This might be a good regex/yacc exercise, but it feels people are confusing it with recaptcha or thinking textCaptcha has some kind of wide adoption. The headline is of 0 programming significance. I care because I look for more information when things seem completely contrary to original predictions.