Miscellaneous Hacks - Enhanced Captcha Image Verification - stop bots from signing up!!

Title : Enhanced Captcha Image Verification

Version : 1.1

Coder : Andy Calderbank & Jason Williams

Purpose : Add extra Image Verification to the registration process, using an alternative system to the Captcha system.

Why : It would appear that spammers can now "read" the Captcha codes and overcome the verification process.

How : This extra feature uses images which are harder for a spam program/bot to interpret than text characters. The user has a choice of 4 randomly displayed images, and the answer is given below. The user must click on that image to proceed, if the incorrect image is selected an error message is shown. The images are randomly shown (from however many are in the directory - you can have as many as you want, just has to be more that 4!) and are automatically created from the images/verification/ directory - all on the fly. Sample images are included with this release, but you can use your own - I recommend using 100 x 100 pixels, in .jpg format and naming the image with a meaningful title (ie A House.jpg) - the extension is stripped so only the filename itself is shown.

To further enhance security, the images are passed through a script which means that none of the images on the screen have file names - and cannot be associated to the question by title alone.

I have been testing this on my forum and have found it to be effective - I cannot guarantee that this will stop all spamming, but this relies more on human input than a computer "reading" the image.

Important : This has been tested on 3.6.2 - I cannot guarantee it will work on anything above, please test with caution - and as always BACKUP FIRST! This will not work on anything below 3.6.0.

Demo : http://www.steadiforum.com/register.php

I hope this is help to the VBulletin community as I know this is a growing problem. I don't fancy the thought of trawling through hundreds of new members deleting stupid usernames and spam posts.

Installation :

1. Upload the verification/ directory to your images/ folder - make sure .htaccess and show.php are present - otherwise it won't work.
2. Import Product - product-image_verification.xml

Upgrading :

1. Upload show.php to the images/verification/ directory.
2. Import Product - product-image_verification.xml - select Allow Overwrite to enable upgrade.

Requirements : GD Libraries installed

File uploads : 39 (including images)
Files to Import : 1
New Templates : 1
New Phrases : 5
Uses Hooks : 1
New Queries : 0

History :
v1.0 - Original release
v1.01 - Slight code change for forums in sub-directories (thanks go to Barakat for solving this one)
v1.1 - Issue resolved with Windows servers also template clean up for xhtml compliance
v1.11 - Added version check function, minor upgrade.

Done - if you like please click install! (and I won't ask for any donations as long as you click Nominate for MOTM!)

Don't forget you don't have to use the provided images - you can customise these to any you wish - I've used ones that are hopefully universal and everyone will recognise.

[TaBaTaN]

nice job, thank you.

[whitetigergrowl]

Originally Posted by yoyoyoyo

I am using 3.6.8, and just now installed this, and am getting these errors:

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: open(/var/sessions/sess_576412532ddd0f178c3d3f7b7934d7a0, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in /register.php(202) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at /home/mysite/public_html/forum/includes/class_core.php:3117) in /register.php(202) : eval()'d code on line 1

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home/mysite/public_html/forum/includes/class_core.php:3117) in /register.php(202) : eval()'d code on line 1

I am experiencing these problems as well. GD IS installed and working. I am using the latest PHP and SQL versions.

[steadicamop]

I am just heading out of the door to work - when I get home tonight I will check how the directory structure is handled, it's been a while since I've looked at the code so can't remember off the top of my head but I'm pretty sure this is something to do with that.

Jason

[whitetigergrowl]

Any word on this getting those few problems fixed?

[steadicamop]

I feel this may be a subdirectory issue - check this post and see if that helps ... if not, I'm not sure - definately further investigation and I will do my best to get this resolved one way or another

[tjdrico]

Good stuff, steadicampop. Installed and set to 8 images. Hopefully this will mean I don't need to moderate all new registrations any more.

[kirsty]

Going to give this a try as I get a lot of bots

[basskiller]

I have this up running on one forum. but just tried to install this on another
and RED X
and this is what is showing when I right click on the Xhttp://www.offshorebodybuilding.com/board/images/verification/show.php

the images are in the right folder
http://www.offshorebodybuilding.com/...ion/PacMan.jpg

I've tried just about everything
GD is enabled
I've tried reconfiguring the htaccess / Extra user verification in the plugin manager like stated in another previous post
also the image_verification template to reflect 'board/images/verification....' instead of 'images/verification....'

[mtrac]

Installed and running fine on 3.6.8 PL2. Thanks for this hack -- I think it will let me put my time to more productive use.

[agorman]

Installed in with the latest patch 3.6.8 and it works great (hopefully).
Do I still need to run the captcha image thingie at registration (such a frustrating process for some people). - I have already added a question and answer as part of registration, so will these surfice?

Brilliant though. Thanks