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July 6th, 2020 × #webdev#security#spam

Hasty Treat - Forms, Captchas, Honeypots, Dealing With Malicious Users and the Sad State of Contact Forms

Discussion of various techniques like honeypots, IP throttling, and CAPTCHAs to secure web forms from spam bots and malicious users while allowing legitimate use.

Wes Bos

Wes Bos Host

Scott Tolinski

Scott Tolinski Host

or
Show Notes Transcript

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about forms, captchas, dealing with malicious users, and more!

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Show Notes

02:00 - So you made a form:

  1. Contact form
  2. Sales form
  3. Email signup for newsletter
  4. Bug report
  5. Sign up for an account
  6. Password reset

03:00 - Now someone is going to:

  1. Have a bot that submits it
  2. Maliciously write a bot that submits thousands

04:14 - So what can you do?

4:54 - Honey pot

  • This is a field that is either hidden or you tell the user not to fill in
  • Can goof up autofill
  • Works in many cases

07:37 - IP Throttle

  • Only allow each IP to do an action a certain number or times inside a window
  • You may only try signing up once per 10 mins

09:48 Block known ASN

12:37 - Captcha

  • Soft captcha: "What is 1 plus 1?"
  • Annoying captcha: Type these letters
  • Google captcha: Train our self driving cars
  • Hidden captcha
  • Cloudflare hCaptcha

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