CAPTCHA is a rather awkward acronym for the even more awkward phrase: “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Ah, nevermind the fact that a Turing test is supposed to tell computers and humans apart, so the phrase is not only awkward but redundant.

Turing’s premise was simply that if a computer could act intelligently enough, then we should call it intelligent. His test was meant to determine, only through text messages, if the thing/person you are talking to is human.

Perhaps CAPT did not seem catchy enough, or even APT, since “completely” is often a stretch even for the largest login sites. But I digress…

The point of this post is to highlight a nice example of how scammers and attackers will stoop to real depths to get around the controls meant to keep them out. GetAFreelancer.com is a site where people can post for-hire ads for odd jobs. For example, here is someone who wants people to solve CAPTCHAs for an hourly rate.

Within a few days there were over 50 bids with an average price of $57. Did the people bidding realize what CAPTCHA are used for? Fortunately the job was closed by the site administrator. Unfortunately, the job was reopened under a different name, which is even more revealing of intent: “automate signup for blogger blogs”.

Here’s a real slice of irony for you, as well. The job description includes the warning: “Bids that are “canned” will be IGNORED.” Oh, don’t you just hate it when a computer responds instead of a person. Perhaps someone should suggest that the person advertising could use a CAPTCHA?

As it turns out the job is from a user “afmatt” (air force matt) who is highly rated by nineteen former temporary workers that helped with work such as “Convert AOL data to be searchable” and “Need a clone of livetexasholdem.com”. Only one job is listed as “Nonpublic”. Shady business, all posted out in the open for us to better understand why our CAPTCHA controls are failing, or at least the going rate for a mule.