Re: CAPTCHA image validation in web form

From: Mike
CAPTCHA is dying. From what I am starting to hear, a honeypot is
being used more and more.

I read Wikipedia's explanation of Honeypot, and it seems to me that CAPTCHA and Honeypot play different roles. A Honeypot is an application that attempts to draw intruders in by offering tantalizing content, but log their hacking methods. Hackers waste time on a trap, while disclosing their hacking methodology. Captcha is an attempt to distinguish humans from automated bots.

One question I've had about Captcha is whether you could substitute a distorted image with something else? What about using a sound file, instead? I know, more computers display images than play sounds, but the idea is the same. A human could "hear" a word pronounced from a sound file, while a bot wouldn't, generally.

And what about carrying the idea further; not using sound or image files. Maybe each letter of the challenge word is stored in standard DOM elements, but their names and other properties change each time the page is requested, and the JavaScript that causes them to be displayed, and processed, changes on each request. Rather than come up with a way to generate and display distorted images, come up with an algorithm for generating seemingly random DOM elements, and JavaScript, that are injected into the page?

Nathan.