However, Prasad was able to pull apart the CAPTCHA bot’s code and uncover how the instructions are passed between the individual bots and the central command-and-control server.

A security researcher said spammers are using a bot to sidestep barriers that Microsoft has erected to keep scammers from creating massive numbers of accounts on its Live Mail service.

In a long post to the Websense blog yesterday, Sumeet Prasad — “our CAPTCHA expert,” said Hubbard — provided technical details of how the bot automatically registers Live Hotmail accounts ...

A new bot can crack defenses erected by Microsoft to keep spammers from creating large numbers of accounts on its Live Hotmail service within seconds, a security researcher said Friday.