June 2009
Beginner
260 pages
5h 40m
English
Content preview from The Myths of Security
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Chapter 34. CrAP-TCHA and the Usability/Security Tradeoff
Over the past few years, most online signups have involved CAPTCHAs, perhaps the security technology with the worst acronym: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
It’s understandable that Google might want to see if it’s a human signing up for that account or some automated program—bad guys would love to have lots of Gmail accounts to be able to send spam through.
Similarly, I can understand why ticket agencies like Ticketmaster might require you to confirm that you’re a human before every purchase. Who wants ticket scalpers writing programs to automate buying tickets (well, besides the ticket brokers)?
But come on, don’t these things make life horrible? I signed up for a Gmail account, which I use to look at my daughter’s blog and post comments. Every single time I want to post a comment, I click Submit, and I get a pop up with a CAPTCHA, like the one shown in Figure 34-1.
Why the heck do I have to click two buttons (one to submit the comment and another to submit the word verification)??!! And it is a pain in the neck to type. I usually just don’t bother commenting on a blog if I have to see one of these (though I do make an exception for my daughter).
Figure 34-1. A CAPTCHA pop up
The idea behind a CAPTCHA in this situation is to prevent bad guys from spamming blog comments. But is that benefit ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.