
Automatically Solving Captchas on Project Euler - nilknarf
http://franklinta.com/2014/08/24/solving-captchas-on-project-euler/
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ary
This is a security problem for Project Euler and should have been disclosed to
them as such. Dropping what amounts to a zero-day on their submission form is
not acting in good faith.

The right way to go about this would have been to break the captcha, submit
the problems, and then email them a polite writeup. Claim the glory _after_
they fix it.

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userbinator
What are the "bad guys" going to do, create accounts and submit problem
solutions...? There doesn't appear to be anything worth "attacking" here
anyway, so I don't think this is a "security problem" at all.

~~~
joshdick
The captcha was introduced to Project Euler a few years ago in response to
someone spamming the site with requests to check an answer.

Apparently, someone had trouble with a question, so they wrote a script to
submit every possible number.

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derekja
nice simple approach!

And despite the previous commenter I don't see a problem with publishing a
neat solution to a fairly cursory attempt to prevent automated submissions. If
they care enough they can fix it, but the rather simplistic nature of their
capcha implies they don't care much. _shrug_

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kevinburke
Heh! I implemented this a few years ago as part of a command line client for
submitting solutions.

[https://bitbucket.org/kevinburke/euler](https://bitbucket.org/kevinburke/euler)

~~~
fantan
Looking at a screenshot
[https://skitch.com/kburke/fmkf3/1-bash-2-1](https://skitch.com/kburke/fmkf3/1-bash-2-1)
it seems like all this does is display the image in terminal and still
requires user input?

