They encrypt it twice? Forget about it, then.
Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
61–70 of 647 posts
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well in excess of 90% of traffic coming out of TOR is spam, bots, malicious, or some combination! Do you have any data on this?
An excellent, wise, and cogent question! In fact I do have data. You can find it here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/ > On the other hand, anonymity is also something that provides value to online attackers. Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. That doesn’t mean they are visiting controversial content, but instead that…
Isn't cloudflare the org that "Doesnt censor under any circumstances", and then turned around and censored white supremacists? Not that I agree with them (I DONT!), but it was a full 180.
And also, isn't cloudflare also the one to allow booters and stressers to be online behind CF - and they used stolen CC's to boot?
The Tor decisions to screw users over is just the cherry on top. Especially is egregious is when a captcha is demanded on even a simple static page. Seems pretty obvious what's going on here.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#63The box has made browsing using TOR insufferable! It fusses and makes me click storefronts and traffic lights until I run out of patience and close out of whatever webpage I was trying to visit. I assume it has to do with a lack of Google cookies on the browser, essentially punishing me for trying to protect my privacy.
Those images are infuriating! Click all boxes with traffic lights. Ok, well, this one box just barely contains the bottom right corner of the traffic light. Click. Nope, that little corner didn't count. Try again. Ok, well on this one, the right side of the traffic light is only barely over the line, so I won't click it. Nope, that sliver of the light mattered this time. MF!
I actually have a few screenshots where the task was impossible since the data was mislabeled. The latest example was "click all of the buses". It wouldn't let me continue because I wouldn't select the fire truck.
My naive assumption is that you should click the "refresh" button in these cases.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#64The box has made browsing using TOR insufferable! It fusses and makes me click storefronts and traffic lights until I run out of patience and close out of whatever webpage I was trying to visit. I assume it has to do with a lack of Google cookies on the browser, essentially punishing me for trying to protect my privacy.
This might surprise you, but it actually has to do with what traffic coming out of TOR looks like. Well in excess of 90% of traffic coming out of TOR is spam, bots, malicious, or some combination! Google isn't going out of their way to punish you for trying to protect your privacy. They're trying to stop unwanted traffic. By unfortunate happenstance, you appear to be disguising yourself in the exact same way a shocki…
Not just for Tor.
I use Firefox with a few basic extensions (Privacy badger, uBlock, Google Container) yet every time I am presented with having to pick out traffic lights over and over and over again. I usually have about 5 or 6 "challenges" before I give up and use another site.
My timezone has not changed, my IP address and rough location has not changed, my screensize has not changed, my broadband speed has not changed, and my general computer dexterity has not changed, yet I am relentlessly targeted. On chrome I never saw these challenges, but on firefox with the privacy plug-ins I am always always always challenged.
At this stage I think the only signal it is using is "is there a google cookie in this browser? and if so has the google cookie got some 'normal' looking activity logged against it?" I.e. they are checking their server-side logs for a given cookie ID and seeing if that looks normal or not (i.e. seen on google search, seen on youtube, seen ads from a variety of third parties on various different sites, mixed up with time of day and speed of viewing etc etc).
Since I have got Google in a container in Firefox, I am guessing that my google cookie is not present when the captcha loads (due to the containers and privacy badger et al) so there is no identity back in the mothership to compare me against.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
An excellent, wise, and cogent question! In fact I do have data. You can find it here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/ > On the other hand, anonymity is also something that provides value to online attackers. Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. That doesn’t mean they are visiting controversial content, but instead that…
A small percentage of bad actors using automaton can produce a lot of traffic. So although it may be true that a large portion of the requests coming from TOR exit nodes is malicious, it would be unwise to conclude that most users of TOR have bad intentions.
True, but from the perspective of an org like CloudFlare, that doesn't matter. They don't know (or care) about the user breakdown coming from Tor; they just know that the vast majority of traffic coming from it is malicious. And since part of the point of Tor is to make it hard to determine who's who, the good traffic gets binned with the bad.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
An excellent, wise, and cogent question! In fact I do have data. You can find it here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/ > On the other hand, anonymity is also something that provides value to online attackers. Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. That doesn’t mean they are visiting controversial content, but instead that…
A small percentage of bad actors using automaton can produce a lot of traffic. So although it may be true that a large portion of the requests coming from TOR exit nodes is malicious, it would be unwise to conclude that most users of TOR have bad intentions.
I don't think anyone is concluding that.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#67Totally anecdotal: Back when I was using a vpn and would see this recaptcha more often, I found that the recaptcha would often declare me a bot (and give me a second chance) if I clicked the boxes too quickly. Like, the storefronts would load and I'd immediately click+click+click+click then submit. But if I slowed down and staggered my clicks, it would realize I'm just another inefficient human who needs time to move a mouse and make decisions.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might surprise you, but it actually has to do with what traffic coming out of TOR looks like. Well in excess of 90% of traffic coming out of TOR is spam, bots, malicious, or some combination! Google isn't going out of their way to punish you for trying to protect your privacy. They're trying to stop unwanted traffic. By unfortunate happenstance, you appear to be disguising yourself in the exact same way a shocki…
I think you are partially wrong. Maybe Google is not doing this intentionally but it also doesn't happen just because traffic is coming out of a tor node. I am using ff with some of the recommended extensions from https://www.privacytools.io/ and I get to fill in traffic signs all the time. And yes I am logged into Google.
I think what OP is talking about is Cloudflare not Google's decision. Google provides the CATCHPA API but Cloudflare decides to flag nearly all Tor traffic and make it go through the CATCHPA.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#69When trying to detect ad fraud, one problematic scenario is that of replay attacks. It's basically when a scammer records human behavior on a site, and then replays a mix of actual their sessions to fraudulently click an ad. The Quora answer is interesting but it's not clear to me whether the "I'm not a robot" box cannot be defeated in a similar manner.
I work on bot detection at hCaptcha.com. (Hiring: reach out if you want to apply machine learning to stop bots and help websites monetize their traffic without ads)
In order to successfully execute a replay attack you would also need to pass the Turing Test, i.e. click the correct images. If you design a bot that starts a combinatoric attacking by trying random guesses we can easily confuse it, so most attackers try to use a solver service.
We can also identify how you interact with semantic content in the images when you click on the image and characterize your mouse interaction as human or non-human. Since confidence increases as more results come in we can also run them after the initial pass and then shadow-ban bots. (And notify the targeted website that we have determined e.g. a particular signup is a bot.)
Ultimately, many techniques beyond simple correct/not-correct are required to defend against the main attack vector: humans hired to solve captchas en-masse and make thousands of fake accounts. Modern ML is pretty effective for these kinds of problems. Browser obfuscation does not add real security, and today's reCAPTCHA (all versions) is easily defeated in practice.
Re: Why can’t a bot tick the 'I'm not a robot' box?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might surprise you, but it actually has to do with what traffic coming out of TOR looks like. Well in excess of 90% of traffic coming out of TOR is spam, bots, malicious, or some combination! Google isn't going out of their way to punish you for trying to protect your privacy. They're trying to stop unwanted traffic. By unfortunate happenstance, you appear to be disguising yourself in the exact same way a shocki…
Not just for Tor. I use Firefox with a few basic extensions (Privacy badger, uBlock, Google Container) yet every time I am presented with having to pick out traffic lights over and over and over again. I usually have about 5 or 6 "challenges" before I give up and use another site. My timezone has not changed, my IP address and rough location has not changed, my screensize has not changed, my broadband speed has not c…
> My timezone has not changed, my IP address and rough location has not changed, my screensize has not changed, my broadband speed has not changed, and my general computer dexterity has not changed, yet I am relentlessly targeted. On chrome I never saw these challenges, but on firefox with the privacy plug-ins I am always always always challenged.
That's because Google isn't just profiling "Tor users". They're going after anyone who values privacy in any way or technology.
Simply put, you're being punished for ensuring privacy. And anybody who uses Google's captcha services is an accessory to that.