NaDrew's Journal: [r] CAPTCHA defeated... by porn

C|Net News.com reports that spammers are using the enticement of free porn to defeat CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Test to tell Humans and Computers Apart) to enable automatic creation of Yahoo and Hotmail email accounts.

First, the spammers open and advertise a Web site containing pornography. Visitors to the porn site are asked to enter the word contained in a Captcha graphic before they are granted access. In the background, spammers have already used scripts to automate the Web mail accounts opening process to the point where they need a human to "read" the Captcha graphics. The Captcha graphics from the Web mail site are transferred to the porn site, where the porn consumers interpret the Captcha words. As soon as they enter the correct word, the script can complete its application process and the visitors are rewarded with free porn.

Ingenious.