C.A.S.P.E.R.

"Completely Automated System for
Preventing Erroneous Registrations"

THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN TERMINATED
IT WILL NO LONGER BE DEVELOPED

NOTE: THIS SITE/PAGE IS NOT ABOUT THE RECENT CASPER GAME PLAYING BOT WITH CAPTCHA SOLVER. IT IS ENTIRELY ABOUT STOPPING BOTS FROM GETTING INTO PHPBB3 AND OTHER PHP DRIVEN SYSTEMS!!!

The author suspects the other "software" is actually trying to slander this one due to it's effectiveness. C.A.S.P.E.R. was named after the author's hometown, Casper, WY, and was "bacronymed" to fit.

A new project, based on giving older CAPTCHAs an extemely neeeded boost. While our Backscatter CAPTCHA mod for phpBB2 was great, and to date has never had 1 single automated image recognition leading to a registration, eventually someone will figure out a way to scan it. I might add that there is a phpBB3 release of backscatter , can be downloaded to the right, but even that may be compromised. CASPER seeks to protect CAPTCHAs by sending the scrambling into the 4th dimension. Yes, that dimension is time.

Humans, surprisingly, are real good in dealing with linear things projected in non-linear order through time. By using the abilities of the human mind, and visual system, it should be possible to come up with a CAPTCHA that will stymie any computer, other than a brain. We hope to take advantage of this in the near future. For now, we just have the phpBB3 version of backscatter to offer, and will soon have the first version of CASPER (which is allready under test).

Project Goals

  1. Get the phpBB3 version of Backscatter CAPTCHA up and running... and released on this page. DONE!
    END OF CAPTCHA MODS...
    ...BEGINNING OF TRUE C.A.S.P.E.R.
  2. Add a basic time-based mask over it to stymie current recognition technology.
    (The below steps will be on hold till I find a way to pass an un-decryptable sequence to an applet running on a client machine.)
  3. Generate captcha in the applet itself.
  4. Make applet stand-alone, and suitable for protecting anything on a scripted site.
  5. Make applet able to send POST username and password information through the browser to open an .htaccess protected directory?

You might be wondering why we wish to wrap the image, or even generate it inside an applet. Well, to tell the truth, the inside of an applet can encrypted heavily, and there is no way to "drill" it for the data, especially if you play the games I am planning.

Most people's browsers run applets just fine. Those who don't can click a protected e-mail link, and ask for assistance. It's time to use the technology to our benefit. Yes, I know reCAPTCHA allready does this, and may be the solution for you, but it is allready suffering from having to do more distortion on the words. reCAPTCHA also doesn't work in the 4th dimension, and that will be it's ultimate downfall. One of my goals is to make a captcha that is easy for a human to read, but impossible for a robotic spammer to deal with. A conceptual preview can be had by scolling down, or clicking here.

Also, unless it's un-avoidable, CASPER will remain a non GD CAPTCHA.

Backscatter for phpBB3

While waiting for CASPER's first beta, let me give a short demo of phpBB3's version of backscatter, now offered as a stopgap measure in the interim during dev of C.A.S.P.E.R. . All the visuals below contain the code "3 K V 3 M S G M"

Version/Variant 1

This version may allready be compromised, but from reports it seems that no one is bothering with it yet. In my opinion, it does require a level of pre-processing before OCR beyond the sophistication of any current bots.

Version/Variant 2

This version may be compromisable, but it at least requires another level of pre-processing before submitting to an OCR, and in this second level, there must be an intelligent decision made or the OCR bot will get pure garbage. (This one needs a human to get right without fail).

Version/Variant 3

This one even I, with intelligent steps, was unable to modify in such a way that the data wasn't destroyed beyond use. So I would say this is nearly a proof CAPTCHA.

C.A.S.P.E.R. Preview

Just to whet your whistle, here's a conceptual preview of CASPER. While it has the Variant 1 character generator, as you can see, it uses a random, moving block, to obscure part of the code. Never is the whole of the code capturable in 1 image. This should be bot proof, and if not, easily moddable to recover bot proof status. The block of course, will be displayed randomly in the real version.