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Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by dang on Monday January 09, 2023 @12:58PM (#34313452)
No recent changes, but we do sometimes turn captchas on for logins when HN is under some kind of (possible) attack or other. That's been happening for a few hours. Hopefully it goes away soon.

Btw I also fume when I have to work as an unpaid manual image recognizer, so I'm open to alternatives.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by vdfs on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:04PM (#34313577)
You can actually solve those captcha using Speech to text, there many tools that do that, ex:

https://github.com/xHossein/PyPasser

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by pxx on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:27PM (#34313992)
2captcha is a human-based solver service.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by pxx on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @08:45AM (#34324741)
(for posterity, since I can't edit this post anymore: the parent of this comment originally linked to 2captcha)
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by Alifatisk on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:36PM (#34314137)
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by LinuxBender on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:10PM (#34313683)
Aside from 3rd party code perhaps one middle-of-the-road idea would be a table of a few hundred factoids and then code that makes multiple choice checkbox factoids like

- Select everything that is a color im sure there are more clever open-ended questions

- Red

- Blue

- Monkey

- Violet

- Armchair

People say that bots can learn such things but if every site had their own in-house tool then bots would have to keep track of thousands of site specific puzzles. Each site could even rotate through a dozen sets of different puzzle types and pause the ones that get learned. This would avoid sending cookies to a third party or depending on 3rd party code.

Bonus complexity: Don't use Alpha-Numeric characers. Use something like "figlet" [1] and cycle through a few of its ASCII art fonts.

[1] - https://github.com/xero/figlet-fonts

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by amf12 on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:18PM (#34313834)
> but if every site had their own in-house tool

Costs money to maintain and build correctly, which naturally leads to buying existing solutions.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by LinuxBender on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:25PM (#34313949)
I've heard that too, but I think it would take a decent developer 1 hour to make a first pass at such a thing. It doesn't have to be complicated nor perfect. I'm not even a developer and I bet I could make one. I'll work on one for one of my sites.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by waspight on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:30PM (#34314043)
Said every customer
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by Filligree on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @09:31AM (#34325363)
I've seen a couple sites that do this. One of them just asks for the square root of -1!

And sure, qntm.org isn't nearly as big a website as HN, but I concur that this isn't likely to be super-difficult. The wide use of recaptcha seems like mostly laziness; most websites aren't big enough to get targeted attacks.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by ghghgfdfgh on Monday January 09, 2023 @04:07PM (#34316081)
I think your idea is exactly what I would want in a captcha, but an issue with your example is that it would only pertain to English speakers, and it would be difficult to translate it into a variety of different languages to accommodate everyone.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by LinuxBender on Monday January 09, 2023 @06:21PM (#34317989)
I assume the existing captcha services look at the Accept-Language header. That header could be read by the Lua script. Each puzzle set could be translated one time through google translate or perhaps a better translation site. It should probably be proof read by someone from each language used to ensure nothing translates out of context into something offensive. I think I've seen people do this on Github, having people proof read translations. In this case it probably should be a smaller group to reduce risk of leaking the puzzle mapping to the bot code authors.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by chrismcb on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @12:15AM (#34320818)
I think chatgpt is way ahead of you.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by sillysaurusx on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:09PM (#34313647)
I vote "What's the output of the following Arc snippet?"

Be sure to include a few macros, otherwise the JS crowd will still be able to reverse engineer their way in.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by _-----_ on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:33PM (#34314090)
hCaptcha would be an upgrade from Google's data farming.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by mdaniel on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:51PM (#34314335)
please god no; I appreciate the anti Google crowd's concern but hCaptcha can die in a fire
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by eatbots on Monday January 09, 2023 @02:55PM (#34315129)
hCaptcha has completely passive score-only modes. When to challenge and how hard is up to the site.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by mdaniel on Monday January 09, 2023 @03:20PM (#34315425)
Well, if the "rager hard" mode is the default, that doesn't help the general population, now does it? I still hate hCaptcha with a burning passion and hope no site ever adopts it
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by cassianoleal on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @05:02AM (#34322598)
I dislike any kind of CAPTCHA. That said, reCAPTCHA is the worst. It may be my combination of anonymised Firefox, CG-NAT and other tracking and privacy protections, but reCAPTCHA is overly hostile to me.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by jgrahamc on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:01PM (#34313512)
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by Terretta on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @12:22AM (#34320856)
"Today we’re giving everyone a better option."

Followed by a modern reimagining of the classic 88x31 animated gif mini-banner button as a not so subtle pixel.gif tracker.

https://www.yewknee.com/_img/blog/blog_webbuttons020.png

"Once you’ve deployed Turnstile, you can go back to the dashboard and see analytics on where you have widgets deployed..."

So less a gift, more another sensor.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by btilly on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:10PM (#34313678)
I have an idea for a button that will slow down bots while being less inconvenient for humans.

I'll send details in an email.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:05PM (#34313593)
I'd love to know more. Historically, what kind of attacks do you see? What is their goal or what do they get out of attacking HN?
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by traceroute66 on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:03PM (#34313550)
> we do sometimes turn captchas on for logins when HN is under some kind of (possible) attack

I don't think people are disputing the necessity, just the mechanism used.

The other services (hCaptcha) are effectively drop-in replacement with minimal code changes.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by nokya on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @06:42AM (#34337414)
+1 nothing against some anti bot feature, just hopefully not Google.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by badrabbit on Monday January 09, 2023 @01:19PM (#34313849)
It looks like the attack is login based since that's where your captcha is. Allow a single captcha-free attempt to login successfully from a /24. If the login fails then put the /24 on captcha for X hours. That way most login attempts that are legit won't see the captcha. Also, HN crowd I think prefers hcaptcha.

Lastly, what I would do is have users pick a login image, in addition to the password login, they have to pick a correct image in addition to password.So it would still be the process I suggested except a failed login is allowed one time so long as the correct login image is selected. Also, the login images will be slow to load during times of attack on purpose to identify clients that are guessing before the image is served and to slow down their attack. I would also maintain a list of IP+UA that have repeatedly logged in succesfully to exempt or prioritize them depending on the attack.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by neilv on Monday January 09, 2023 @02:24PM (#34314748)
One concern with Google Recaptcha on HN is that it seems a good number of HN users want to be pseudonymous, possibly including towards Google. Always-perfect browser OPSEC is hard in practice.

(Condolences on the attack/headache.)

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by joshspankit on Monday January 09, 2023 @02:58PM (#34315176)
How about genuinely-long delays between login attempts? 5 seconds slows down a bot, 15-30 seconds could make many login attacks unrealistic.

Also: OTP 2FA?

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tinus_hn on Monday January 09, 2023 @08:45PM (#34319250)
It’s not easy to tell two login attempts are from one bot. This kind of workaround unfortunately doesn’t work in practice. Otherwise of course this whole problem wouldn’t exist.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by joshspankit on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @06:22AM (#34323167)
Why would you have to tell if they’re from one bot?
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tinus_hn on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @07:09AM (#34323569)
Because you want to have delays between bot login attempts?
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by joshspankit on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @09:54AM (#34325732)
I think that’s overcomplicating it: Just do it site-wide for all login attempts (always on, or like the captcha: as-needed)
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tinus_hn on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @04:44PM (#34331972)
So now in the case of a bot attack no one can login. That doesn’t work.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by joshspankit on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @06:27PM (#34332941)
What do you mean?
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tinus_hn on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @04:37AM (#34336727)
If you block all logins for 5 seconds after a bot attempts to login, and the bot attempts to login 50 times per second, no one will be able to login.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by joshspankit on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @07:43AM (#34337745)
I understand the confusion now.

No I mean when a specific user has a failed login attempt that user has to wait 5-30 seconds before being able to try again. A legitimate user would only be affected if a bot is trying to log in as them.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tinus_hn on Thursday January 12, 2023 @06:31PM (#34361788)
That’s account lockouts, it doesn’t work against bots because they can just try a million accounts instead of a million passwords on one account and it makes it super easy to do a denial of service on an account, and it doesn’t prevent a denial of service against the server that has to service all these login attempts that might very well involve running hashes designed to be computationally intensive, like PBKDF2.

This is not a novel measure, rest assured that the people that choose to implement captcha instead are aware of its existence and chose for the captcha instead.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by LoveMortuus on Monday January 09, 2023 @03:24PM (#34315477)
How about if Dang assesses our humanity? That way we don't have to do image recognition stuff and neither does Dang! A win-win if I say so!
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by lrvick on Monday January 09, 2023 @04:22PM (#34316266)
If possible, implement WebAuthn even if only for human verification.

Bots will not have access to TouchID, Windows Hello, or a Yubikey but most humans have one of those in the device in front of them right now.

Fallback to captcha for edge cases, but then at least /most/ people can skip it.

Example: https://cloudflarechallenge.com/

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by tjohns on Monday January 09, 2023 @04:48PM (#34316656)
Those can all easily be emulated in software, if you're determined enough.

There's nothing about the WebAuthn protocol that forces hardware backed key storage, other than everyone collectively agreeing it's a good idea. A bot author would just ignore that.

Firefox already includes this functionality, gated by flag (security.webauth.webauthn_enable_softtoken).

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by lrvick on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @07:34AM (#34323879)
> Those can all easily be emulated in software, if you're determined enough.

Not possible if vendor signature checking is enforced. All major webauthn device manufacturers sign the keys of all the devices they produce. You can prove a given device is unique and issued by Apple, Yubico, Google, Microsoft, etc.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by cassianoleal on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @05:11AM (#34322672)
Hi dang, I'm not sure you're still going to read this message since it's been many hours.

First, I'm sorry to hear HN was under attack. That's never fun.

Second, I understand your reasons for temporarily turning on the CAPTCHA, even though as a user I really dislike it - especially reCAPTCHA.

Given the latter, I hope you will consider alternatives. Regardless though, it would be nice to add a message to the login page explaining that the CAPTCHA is temporary because the website is under attack. That would allow me to keep 3rd-party stuff blocked by uBO on the login page and still know what's going on. I would probably just keep the pages I'm interested in on a tab and come back to them later, when the CAPTCHA is gone.

In any case, as always, thanks for your work keeping this forum alive and healthy.

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by andrewshadura on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @05:06PM (#34332222)
Unfortunately, this breaks apps, Materialistic in my case.
Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by dang on Wednesday January 11, 2023 @01:31AM (#34335710)
Yes, the mobile apps are all third-party and this is one of the downsides.

I'll whitelist your account for now (i.e. until the server restarts). If anyone else wants that, email [email protected] and I'll do it as soon as I'm back online.

(It looked like the attack had died down but then it un-died back up again)

Re:Ask HN: Did HN just start using Google recaptcha for logins? by andrewshadura on Thursday January 12, 2023 @04:05AM (#34350948)
Thanks!