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HBO Max new Captcha system

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Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#131
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: who has a decent plan to create proof-of-human systems that are not only CAPTCHA based? We will soon need this, and I feel government will gladly present a solution: provide your ID when you connect to the Internet, and we will guarantee you are a human. Who's actually working on this and has released papers I can study? Because all this AI nonsense will only accelerate us towards this total control…

> Serious question: who has a decent plan to create proof-of-human systems that are not only CAPTCHA based? > We will soon need this, and I feel government will gladly present a solution: provide your ID when you connect to the Internet, and we will guarantee you are a human.' I'm extremely hesitant to give any State the ability to track an individual user's online activity that intensely. It's been extensively docum…

> What would only take a few seconds for a single user would take hours for anyone seeking to establish a bot network spanning thousands of pseudo-users.

The claims on the mCaptcha site contradict this. They say it takes about 2 seconds worst case for a computer to do the work, which is hashing sha 256. Looking around, an unaccelerated celron is about 1/20th the speed of a single ryzen core, and gpus are much faster.

Assuming the attacker has an 8 core ryzen with no gpu, they can hash 160 times faster than the person with an older machine.

Assuming the 2 sec upper bound is correct, this means a sub $1000 desktop can create 80 accounts per second, or 4800 accounts per minute.

If they are operating a botnet, then they presumably have access to more than one machine.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#132

Correction: it's just Max now, not HBO Max. Moderators, can we look at fixing up the title here so it's more accurate?

Just because some new executive wanted to piss on the fire hydrant to "make their mark", doesn't mean we have to respect their poor marketing decisions.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#134
Terrible UX aside, aren't these really... REALLY easy to solve for a bot?

Sum the digits on the dies? 5 lines of openCV should do the trick

Find which of 3 (three!) extracts is a repeating pattern?? Could this be any easier? This sounds actually easier for a machine than for a human being!

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#135
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a BS in Computer Science and I can't do basic math reliably... 3+4? About 10. Is that something they teach in grad school?

10 is within the right amount of time complexity - someone else can correct me on the phrasing, I'm only an electrical engineer.

To a plasma physicist, 10 is within an order of magnitude, so as good as one could hope for.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#136

Terrible UX aside, aren't these really... REALLY easy to solve for a bot? Sum the digits on the dies? 5 lines of openCV should do the trick Find which of 3 (three!) extracts is a repeating pattern?? Could this be any easier? This sounds actually easier for a machine than for a human being!

I've been observing that the custom captcha process itself is a very good bot repellent because someone has to reverse engineer captcha behavior and most malicious actors actually don't know how to. Sprinkle a bit of obfuscation and your 2+2 captcha will be more effective than pages of traffic light selections.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#138
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: who has a decent plan to create proof-of-human systems that are not only CAPTCHA based? We will soon need this, and I feel government will gladly present a solution: provide your ID when you connect to the Internet, and we will guarantee you are a human. Who's actually working on this and has released papers I can study? Because all this AI nonsense will only accelerate us towards this total control…

> Serious question: who has a decent plan to create proof-of-human systems that are not only CAPTCHA based? > We will soon need this, and I feel government will gladly present a solution: provide your ID when you connect to the Internet, and we will guarantee you are a human.' I'm extremely hesitant to give any State the ability to track an individual user's online activity that intensely. It's been extensively docum…

Utilize compute-intensive & memory-intensive tasks in CAPTCHAs.

One look at what happened with cryptocurrencies tells me that isn't going to work.

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#139
post #9

I experienced the HBO Max captchas just a few days ago. Everyone did since they launched a new app and made everyone switch to that and re-login. Some of the solutions are clearly just wrong. I have a PhD in Computer Science and if I am failing multiple basic addition problems, I assure you that it isn't me, the answers are wrong. I had to do the same audio puzzles and got the first audio puzzle wrong too, and I even…

I doubt this is the case but theoretically you can make stupid or incorrect captcha and it will still deter bots if you actually check the pattern of use (I.e how many clicks in what intervals etc...) instead of checking if the answer is correct.

This is more or less what cloudflare and such do now as I understand it (as well as checking browser features and such)

Re: HBO Max new Captcha system

#140
post #23

This is Arkose MatchKey. Hopefully, they will one day fix the UI covering the images. https://www.arkoselabs.com/arkose-matchkey/

From their website: > Arkose MatchKey challenges have revolutionized CAPTCHAs

I suppose that's technically correct for some values of "revolutionized"
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