The CAPTCHA security system that Yahoo, and many other email service providers adopt to prevent spam, may not be secure, according to Russian security researchers. The researchers claim to have found a way in which the security system can be compromised. This would result in a huge increase in spam coming from yahoo and other email accounts.

CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a technique adopted by Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft (News - Alert) among other service providers to prevent automated software programs from posing as humans and signing up for new accounts. It presents text that is easy for humans to comprehend but difficult for automated programs and as a result protects Web sites from bots. The first CAPTCHA was invented at the Carnegie Mellon University to be used by Yahoo. Yahoo’s CAPTCHA Broken…Is a Spam Tsunami in the Offing?

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