HTML Encoded Captchas

[TopHosts NewsMan]

rangeva writes to tell us about a twist he has developed on the common Captcha technique to discourage spam bots: HECs encode the Captcha image into HTML, thus presenting an unsolved challenge to the bots' programmers. From the writeup: "The Captcha is no longer an image and therefore not a resource they can download and process. The owner of the site can change the properties of the Captcha's HTML, making it unique,... add[ing] another layer of complication for the bot to crack." HECs are not exactly lightweight — the one on the linked page weighs in at 218K — but this GPL'd project seems like a nice advance on the state of the art.



Link To Original Article

[bricelopez]

At the end of the day, this captcha is displayed on the awning as a bright harder-to-read mumbo-jumbo, just like jpeg captchas, so all a bot has to do is use a html renderer to about-face it into a approved angel that can be processed. So the added aggravation is bond one of the absolute captcha decoders and the gecko engine for example, maybe a bisected day's work. Not absolutely uncrackable.