More Spam Expected From Google and Microsoft
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October 6th, 2008
No I don’t mean that Google and Microsoft have started to spam people though I do certainly get a lot of messages from both of them.
What I mean is that the Spammers have reportedly broken the tools deployed by the online giants Google and Microsoft to stop spammers from trading on the good name (and thus reputation) of the large farms of mail servers hosted by these two companies.
They have to have 100’s if not 1,000’s of mail servers under their control to be able to offer the gmail and live e-mail experience to their customers and you can almost hear the splash of saliva hitting the floor as the spammers work hard to get access to all this e-mail delivery power.
These two Internet Giants had issues a while ago with spammers breaking the CAPTCA technology using automatic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) or farming it out to real humans so they had implemented additional controls in the ongoing escalation on the war on spam.
CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are those images with the distorted or obscured letters that computers are not so good at figuring out but which are a snap for a human.
As long as there is an economic incentive to send spam the spammers will have the money to either research better tools to recognize the images or will just farm it out to real people who are willing to work for a few cents per image or even for free if you make it part of a game or required to sign up for something people want like a ‘free’ ring-tone of the latest band.
More details on the Register’s website.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/03/captcha_break/
- The Spam Cryer
Here are some more Blog articles on CAPTCHA Spam:
- If this sounds like you, then it might be time to invest in a Dream Captcha. Yes, it’s an awful play on words, but you have to admit that it’s still pretty amusing. It almost makes you wonder how long it would take someone to get if … - Captcha spam prevention system is updated. Advaned Captcha is enabled. A new set of fonts and background images have been installed as well. Overall system has been improved and updated XML files have been installed. … - A coworker came across the following CAPTCHA. Finally, one that can beat spammers and their bots! image. - Once penetrated these bots proceed to create several accounts, and then use them to send high volumes of spam messages. Both Microsoft and Google responded by strengthening their CAPTCHA systems, but it seems that the spammers have … - Spam-tools scumbags behind the XRumer utility boast their application can defeat improved CAPTCHA controls deployed by both Hotmail and Google in response to earlier cracks, according to reports in the blogosphere. … - I do get spam from other sites I own, even those with captcha systems to validate input. But none of them receive the obcene spam I get from the work from home keywords. Would love to know what others are experiencing. - Spam bots deserve every nightmare. Jeffrey Augustine’s Dream Captcha updates a familiar faux-cultural symbol with the security layer consumers expect from their nocturnal hallucination protection device. … - Spammers have reportedly defeated revised CAPTCHAs from both Google and Microsoft. Worse, miscreants intent on establishing online webmail accounts to bombard us all with useless stock tip… - Apparently, the spam bots are getting smarter and were able to bypass the captcha system for IPB. Due to this, IPB released an update (2.3.6). However, this version wasn’t installed until just recently meaning some of the bots got in. … |
Entry Filed under: Lead Story, Research
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