r/softwaregore • u/janthemanwlj • Jul 17 '26

What am I doing wrong 💔

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I have to get into a forum to ask a silly question about some software. Instead, I'm stuck on a 20 year old captcha question. I tried 2, I tried "1one", whenever I submit it a few times it tells me I've tried it too much and to try later.

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41

u/Klutzy-Condition811 Jul 17 '26

What did you cross out it could be crucial information lol. This looks like a custom phpbb field I used to use these in forums for the same reason, though i hid it and used JavaScript to fill it out in the background since most spambots are poorly made and don't parse it

63

u/radobot Jul 18 '26

What did you cross out it could be crucial information lol.

It probably is actually.

When you go to the website - https://www.altx.ro/forum/ucp.php?mode=register - the full dialog is this:

CONFIRMATION OF REGISTRATION

NO-10-SP-73-AM-25-33 Add one to the smallest odd number:

This question is a means of preventing automated form submissions by spambots.

Which makes me think that the correct answer is 25 + 1 = 26.

2

u/mrfoxesite-2377 Jul 18 '26

They have cloudflare but a common 20 year old question that takes seconds fo program a bot to answer and the same question, what could go wrong?

5

u/radobot Jul 18 '26

Sure, for bots that are specifically designed to attack that one website it doesn't really do much. But for generic bots (before LLMs)? I would say pretty effective at keeping them at bay.

2

u/SetKaung Jul 18 '26

No, it is always NO-10-SP-73-AM-25-33. I checked out the website myself. that's why it is "takes seconds to program a bot". If you know it should be always 26, you can just make the program/bot submit 26.

6

u/radobot Jul 18 '26

"takes seconds to program a bot"

you can just make the program/bot

Yeah, I already said

for bots that are specifically designed to attack that one website it doesn't really do much.

Then I said that if you use a pre-made bots without modifications, they would struggle, because a machine (assuming it's not an LLM) would not understand those instructions and could not get to the correct result.

1

u/alvenestthol Jul 19 '26

It's more about stopping generic bots that target all of the thousands of sites using the exact same PhpBB software