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An anonymous programmer going by the name “John Wane” has claimed to have cracked Yahoo’s CAPTCHA software. CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) software is used by most major websites, including Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, and others, to prevent automated systems from creating thousands of accounts to send spam with. Everyone’s seen it. When you register on a site, you’re presented with an image containing a jumbled “code” and you must enter it correctly to continue.  “John Wane” posted code for a decoder he claimed could get around that step and has an accuracy rate of 35%.

Last year a virtual stripper named Melissa helped spammers get around CAPTCHA codes. Every time the user correctly entered the characters in the accompany CAPTCHA window, she would shed more and more of her clothes. If hackers are indeed successful at cracking CAPTCHA software, it could open the floodgates for spammers. They would be able to create thousands of accounts to send spam through, causing severe strains on servers and bandwidth.

Yahoo says it is aware of the issue and is working on improving their CAPTCHA system, but “John Wane” claims he contacted Yahoo to alert them of the vulnerability in their software and did not get a response.

Read [PCWorld]

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