FS#64353 - Wiki: Fix captcha, don't ask users to execute random shell commands

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Pascal Ernster (hardfalcon) - Saturday, 02 November 2019, 04:05 GMT
Last edited by Doug Newgard (Scimmia) - Saturday, 02 November 2019, 04:47 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Web Sites
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

The wiki just asked me for the output of running "pacman -V|base32|head -1" as a captcha.

To put it mildly, this is a *really* stupid idea, for a number of reasons:

- This doesn't work if you are using the testing repo (which currently contains a newer version of pacman than the core repo).
- This doesn't work if you are on a system that hasn't yet been updated to the latest pacman version.
- This doesn't work for users who are not currently sitting in front of a machine running Archlinux.
- Asking users to paste random commands into their shell seems just like a really bad idea in and for itself. The Archlinux wiki is supposed to be about Archlinux, not about questionable social engineering techniques.
- This doesn't really work as a captcha since it can be easily circumvented.

Also, if been asked the same captcha multiple times. If there is only a single captcha, just spare users the nuisance or at least use a cookie so users don't have to solve the same captcha over and over again.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Doug Newgard (Scimmia)
Saturday, 02 November 2019, 04:47 GMT
Reason for closing:  Duplicate
Additional comments about closing:   FS#48395  and others
Comment by Pascal Ernster (hardfalcon) - Saturday, 02 November 2019, 04:07 GMT
Correction: The first "if" in the last line should've been an "I've".

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