Turing keys

[Ejap]

I work at that builds web bots for some clients, but every so often we run into turing keys (you know those things that make you type in a set of numbers or letters so that you can continue on a form) and I get stopped right there. I need to know if there is a good method to spoof the turing keys so that we can automate a bot for sites like that.

[edited by: ThomasB at 3:42 pm (utc) on Jan. 6, 2006]
[edit reason] Signature and company name removed [/edit]

[vincevincevince]

I can think of three possibilities:-

1 - Repeatedly request images, save them, keep going until you have all of them. Manually determine what they are and then you can use a hash of the image to determine a match. This works where there is a limited number of images (no randomised part)

2 - AI/Neural networking methods based upon training - never 100% accurate but can achieve some very good results with time.

3 - Weaknesses in the call/display system - Inspect the content of cookies, URLs, etc. used to call the image request. It is possible that the result is actually encoded in the code that calls the image in some way.

I will caution that where people use such systems it is highly unlikely that they are unable to provide you with a means to bypass them. If you don't have authorisation to run the bots (i.e. it's someone other than the site owner asking for it) then I'd be very careful as deliberately circumventing security restrictions may well be a criminal offence in your country.