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Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

nullpt.rs

281–290 of 378 posts

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so really captchas are more like putting a small min amount of effort. At that point a proof of work captcha (mCaptcha.org is one, but there are others), is probably the best option. Especially with how any reasonably effective traditional captcha is an accessibility nightmare.

It's completely unclear what a "proof of work" captchas is supposed to be.

Almost always it's some variation of "give me a string with the SHA256 hash starting with 0.a471"

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#283
post #58

There is a reason why people moved away from distorted text based captcha. We are basically at the point where computers are better at them then humans. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot14/woot14... is a paper on the subject i think is really interesting However a surprising amount of text based captchas can be solved in a few line shell script of, using imagemagik to convert to greyscale, dilate an…

Just because you can technically crack them doesn't mean they're useless. There's a significant amount of time, skill and effort that went into the solution from this post, and the end result doesn't generalize well (you'd have to start all over for a different kind of captcha). The vast majority of spammers would not be able to replicate this; those who do would either make money legitimately, or focus their skills…

The watershed of "good enough at programming to just get a real job" vs "can code enough to be really annoying to businesses, but not enough to hack it as a dev" is a lot more on the annoying side than you'd think.

I say this with the chagrin of someone who works on a cool software product that is also coincidentally really well-shaped to make people want to abuse it.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#285

It might be worth noting that this, including the harder version the op encountered, are not the hardest captchas that 4chan can serve. There is a still harder version which is sent to less trustworthy IPs. I imagine it would still be tractably solved with computer vision. This in part misses the point though, since 4chan has been continuously altering their captcha since it released, making it difficult to create a…

Datacenter IPs can’t even post at all, nevermind needing to solve a CAPTCHA. That’s why the accusations of “VPN shill” are usually wrong, as is the assumption of anonymity – 4chan is in fact one of the least anonymous sites on the internet. The optional username feature gives it a veneer of anonymity, but the strict IP requirements ensure almost every post is attributable to a residential internet connection, and rel…

You can get residential ips nowadays. They are much more expensive for an individual, but for a business or nation-state, it is a feasible option.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. It's the spam that tops the problem list.

That's the price you pay for ability to freely and anonymously voice different opinions. And even then 4chan is considered "soft", because mods still delete some egregiously "incorrect" opinions.

[deleted]

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. It's the spam that tops the problem list.

It's a bit embarrassing I even have to explain this, but yes, because racism or sexism are very important parts of 4chan's appeal: it's a place with freedom of speech. Let's be real the standards of discussion are low, but people can discuss stuff freely, which they wouldn't be able to if everything was buried under some GPT generated spam.

A lot of people think 4chan is one of the last bastions of free speech on the internet because they see a lot of racism that would normally be banned anywhere else.

But if you post something that goes against the alt-right that pisses them off too much and getting a lot of replies, it'll be deleted within minutes, or you'll even get banned for being "off topic".

4chan is not free speech, it is just a haven for the alt-right.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#288
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says I've been blocked when I try to view that. Not on a VPN.

The site runs off of a tiny little server at home so I’ve got some very aggressive firewall rules. Anything from the usual bad countries, certain signatures etc are blocked. Reduced traffic to 1% of previous load.

What are the bad countries? Russia and china?

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but you know his actions are enabling more AI content and spam to proliferate? I hardly think he is making that much money just because legitimate users don't want to fill in a captcha.

It’s very easy to opine about the ethics others should have. Different when it’s you and your family and a comparatively easy effort will make a material difference in quality of life. And especially when you know ghe market need will be met by someone else anyway.

So says every drug dealer.

Re: Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA

#290
post #13

Appropriate response by 4Chan to this: simplify the human work given that anyway it's simple to solve via NNs. We are at a point where designing very hard captchas has high probabilities to increase the human annoyance without decreasing the machine solvability.

> simplify the human work given that anyway it's simple to solve via NNs. We are at a point where designing very hard captchas has high probabilities to increase the human annoyance without decreasing the machine solvability Or disallow free users to post at all, and require everyone to buy the 4chan Pass for $20 USD per year if they want to post. https://4chan.org/pass This is already available to not have CAPTCHA.…

What? So you use 4chan? It would completely kill what makes this website special
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