CODEWITHSUNDEEP
securitycaptcha
SandBag_1996
SandBag_1996

Reputation: 1601

Human verfication

Enter certain text to verify you are human

I have observed this on numerous websites, including SO. I dont know a thing about hacking, but I don't understand why is it required? Especially, in SO when making edits, sometimes it asks to enter some text to verify if it is Human or not.. I mean, how can a computer program (design for these kind of hacks) do edits (with SO's rules and restrictions on editing) , and then save them?

Is there any other reason, these verification things are added on any website?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 208

Answers (2)

Jon Hanna
Jon Hanna

Reputation: 113322

SO isn't magic, it's just receiving some HTTP posts, and responding to them. Indeed, it won't even stop me from writing a script, though it will throw up the verification step if something indicates a nasty script (lots of posts per minute, lots of repetition). (Also, please don't call nasty tricks "hacking", it's not polite).

Edit: How to repeat the above from a script, with bits that would make it look like I did it, editted out:

POST http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11989856/answer/submit HTTP/1.1
Host: stackoverflow.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-IE,en;q=0.8,en-gb;q=0.5,en-us;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11989856/human-verfication
Cookie: [THIS BIT EDITED OUT]
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 471

post-text=SO+isn%27t+magic%2C+it%27s+just+receiving+some+HTTP+posts%2C+and+responding+to+them.+Indeed%2C+it+won%27t+even+stop+me+from+writing+a+script%2C+though+it+will+throw+up+the+verification+step+if+something+indicates+a+nasty+script+%28lots+of+posts+per+minute%2C+lots+of+repetition%29.+%28Also%2C+please+don%27t+call+nasty+tricks+%22hacking%22%2C+it%27s+not+polite%29.&fkey=[THIS BIT EDITED OUT]&author=&i1l=[THIS BIT EDITED OUT]

My browser sent that to the site. Send something like that, and you'll have posted to this thread.

Upvotes: 1

Vikram
Vikram

Reputation: 4106

One can write scripts that make edits and save them too. If somebody wants to flood some particular website by doing this, he can do that by ways such as posting spam. To avoid such attacks, tasks like 'Enter certain text to verify if you are a human' are given.

Upvotes: 1

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