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The first time Z hit the captcha on his company's site, he didn't think much of it. And to be honest, the second time he wasn't paying that much attention. So it wasn't until the third time that he realized that the captcha had showed him the same image every single time- a "5" with lines scribbled all over it.
That led Z to dig out the source and see how the captcha was implemneted.
<Center>Click a number below to proceed to the next page. <br>Some browsers do not like this feature and will try to get around it. If you are having trouble<br> seeing the image, empty your internet cache and temporary internet files may help. <br>Please ensure you have no refresher add-ons installed on your browser.<br />
<table border=1><Tr><td colspan='3' align='center'>
<font style='font-size:36px;'><img width='150' title='5' alt='5' src='valimages/5.gif'> </font></td></tr>
<Tr>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=1'>1</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=2'>2</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=3'>3</a></font></td>
</tr>
<Tr>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=4'>4</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=5'>5</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=6'>6</a></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=7'>7</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=8'>8</a></font></td>
<Td align=center><font size='6'><A href='valid.php?got=crimied&linknum=9'>9</a></font></td>
</tr></table>
</Center>
Look, I know there's a joke about how hard it is to center things in CSS, but I think we've gone a little overboard with our attempt here.
Now, the PHP driving this page could have easily been implemented to randomly select an image from the valimages directory, and there was some commented out code to that effect. But it appears that whoever wrote it couldn't quite understand how to link the selected image to the behavior in valid.php, so they just opted to hard code in five as the correct answer.
The bonus, of course, is that the image for five is named 5.gif, which means if anyone really wanted to bypass the captcha, it'd be trivial to do so by scraping the code. I mean, not more trivial than just realizing "it's the same answer every time", but still, trivial.
Of course, out here in the real world, captchas have never been about keeping bots out of sites, and instead are just a way to trick the world into training AI. Pretty soon we'll roll out the Voight-Kampf test, but again, the secret purpose won't be to find the replicants, but instead gather data so that the next generation of replicants can pass the test.
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