Super CAPTCHA Security Suite – Hardened 3D CAPTCHA vs OpenPorte Spam Protection

OpenPorte is a free and open-source plugin that protects WordPress forms from spam using a lightweight Proof-of-Work challenge instead of CAPTCHAs. The goal is to make spam expensive for bots while keeping the experience almost invisible for legitimate visitors and respecting their privacy. For site owners, OpenPorte offers an easy to configure and deploy modern spam protection under their control. For the site users, it offers an accessible, transparent and privacy-friendly alternative to CAPTCHAs. OpenPorte is built around the open-source ALTCHA widget. Some highlights: CAPTCHA-free spam protection Fully open source (GPL) Self-hosted – no mandatory external service Designed to be accessible and privacy-friendly Compatible with existing ALTCHA integrations Easy migration for users of ALTCHA Spam Protection v1 (≤ 1.26.3) For the list of contributors, refer to our GitHub project: Contributors. AI-assisted development AI-assisted project. Architecture, security decisions, and final review are mine; AI tools (Claude, Mistral, and others) help with drafting code, tests, translations, and documentation — without them, one person couldn’t keep this fork alive. Background The original ALTCHA Spam Protection WordPress plugin (v1) was open source (GPLv2). Its authors have since released a version 2/3 which is no longer open source. They no longer maintain the open source project and recommend that users migrate to v2/v3. See the official project at https://altcha.org for their offering. OpenPorte started as a fork and continues the v1 line as free software (GPLv2 or later) for users who want to stay on a fully open-source, self-hosted solution. It is a faithful fork: existing v1 installations can switch to OpenPorte and keep their settings (see Upgrading). Compatibility OpenPorte is backward-compatible with ALTCHA Spam Protection v1 plugin: Your existing settings are migrated automatically on activation. The [altcha] shortcode keeps working (alongside the new [openporte]). The altcha_* filters and actions keep firing as deprecated aliases. Custom API Mode has been verified against GateCHA, an open source server implementing the creation and verification of ALTCHA challenges. See the Deprecations section for the full list of compatibility aliases and what they map to. Upgrading From the original ALTCHA v1 plugin Deactivate the old ALTCHA plugin, then install and activate OpenPorte. Your existing configuration is detected and copied into the OpenPorte settings on first activation; the original ALTCHA settings are left untouched, so you can roll back to ALTCHA v1 without losing anything. Do not run both plugins at the same time. From ALTCHA v2/v3 If your site was already moved to ALTCHA v2/v3 (for example by the automatic 3.0.0 update), your original v1 settings are normally still in the database: the v2/v3 upgrade neither migrates nor removes them. Deactivate ALTCHA, then install and activate OpenPorte — it finds and imports the v1 settings, even when the v1 plugin itself has long been deleted. Settings made in v2/v3 are not read. Deprecations The following ALTCHA-era identifiers are kept as aliases for backward compatibility and are scheduled for removal in a future release: The [altcha] shortcode — use [openporte]. The altcha/v1 REST namespace — use openporte/v1. The altcha_* filters and actions — now firing through WordPress’ deprecated hook mechanism; use the openporte_* equivalents. The AltchaPlugin class and the ALTCHA_VERSION / ALTCHA_WIDGET_VERSION constants — use OpenPortePlugin and the OPENPORTE_* constants. Integrations targeting paid-only third-party plugins; affected users should migrate to the official ALTCHA v2/v3 plugin. The “Custom HTML” integration (auto-configuration of hand-written tags) — place the [openporte] shortcode instead. You can re-enable it for now under Settings → OpenPorte → Integrations. Privacy No cookies, no tracking OpenPorte prioritizes user privacy by avoiding the use of cookies and fingerprinting techniques. No external service This plugin remains fully contained within your WordPress installation, eliminating any reliance on external services. Modes of Operation OpenPorte verifies submissions in one of two modes, selected in the settings (API Mode): Self-hosted (default) — a proof-of-work challenge is issued and verified by your own WordPress site through the REST API. Fully self-contained, with no external service and no additional setup beyond enabling the integrations you need. Custom — point the Challenge URL at your own ALTCHA-compatible backend (for example a self-hosted ALTCHA Sentinel, or GateCHA). Submissions are verified with your site’s shared secret. The paid altcha.org regional SaaS classifier offered by earlier versions has been removed; both remaining modes are free and self-hostable. REST API This plugin requires the WordPress REST API. If you are using any “Disable REST API” plugins, ensure that the endpoint /altcha/v1/challenge (marked for deprecation) and /openporte/v1/challenge are allowed. Supported Integrations CoBlocks Contact Form 7 Elementor Pro Forms (deprecated — paid plugin, see Deprecations) Formidable Forms Forminator GravityForms HTML Forms wpDiscuz WPForms WordPress Login, Register, Password reset WordPress Comments WooCommerce Many other plugins and your own content (via the [openporte] shortcode, or the deprecated [altcha] alias) Source Code All source code for the plugin, and the ALTCHA widget is available on GitHub. In the repository, you’ll also find versions of non-minified JavaScript and CSS assets: Plugin: https://github.com/openporte/openporte ALTCHA Widget: https://github.com/altcha-org/altcha

Read the SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH by the University of Wollongong, Australia. Spoiler: the results are around page 20. You’ve been there, you have installed 20 or more CAPTCHA plugins for WordPress to see them ultimately fail in even slowing down spam bots. We know, we have been there too. I used to run a a very high-profile BuddyPress community website that lost its moderators and administrators because of the web-spam issue. We tried everything, Aksmet, ReCaptcha, and nothing seemed to work. This is because spam bots are reading images with OCR technology. With only 3 minutes of setup on your site, their accuracy at solving your CAPTCHAs are a stunning 92%. This made me think outside the box and answer my own question: What can I do to make it virtually impossible for a computer to know what a human would know. This lead to the first-ever text-based 3-D CAPTCHA and it was born right here on WordPress.org. The technology is so incredibly simple it is mind-blowing — render a transparent image of text and lay lines on top of it. Sounds too easy right? It is for a human. You can see this image and can immediately see what’s missing. A computer however would have to employ reasoning engines to determine what is missing. Our CAPTCHA has been broken by OCR bots programmed specifically for the easiest setting, but only at a 27% success rate. Most other plugins you will find on WordPress.org has a 70-99% success rate! The same university study that broke our captcha admitted, ramping up the settings will make it ‘ UNBREAKABLE ‘. While everyone is trying to complicate their CAPTCHAs with images, flash puzzles, and coloring it like a 2 year old with eight-inch markers, we decided to make an image provoke deduction skills. This plugin no longer offers the CAPTCHA programming itself and the core image generation is hosted by Goldsboro Web Development and you are granted FREE API access through via MyGWD Spam Database. This means you are not required to have GD or Freetype installed. This was a decision made to ensure compatibility and to maintain rights to the future development of the platform. By passing the CAPTCHA code to our server, allowing us to process it and display the CAPTCHA in an iFrame on your site, we are able to ensure that 100% of WordPress administrators with up-to-date servers are able to use this stunning CAPTCHA. Also, we are able to grab, monitor, and detect when bots are attacking, find their routines and even stop them from using your precious bandwidth. The service provided by Goldsboro Web Development is free and no API key or code is ever required. At any time you can upgrade to Pro, in which you will be issued a license key. The price we charge for Pro is just enough to cover our basic costs, $1.99/mo (basically you’re buying us a coffee). Your price does not increase due to volume. We didn’t aim to just band-aid the spam issue, we aspire to permanently fix it. To know what I mean, you really have to download the plugin and see for yourself all the features we added to make securing your site and reporting spamers as easy as possible! Here is a teaser, we automatically query the abuse email for a spamming IP and pre-populate an Abuse Report email so all you have to do is hit “Send”. This plugin is revolutionary in the sense that it employs the most simple technique to solve a very complex problem. Deduction. You do it every day, and don’t even realize it. Every time you feel for your keys in your pocket, or swerve to avoid a pot-hole, you have employed deduction to realize something is missing. This is a human only feature that isn’t available to any other animal or computer. By laying lines over a transparent word, a human can easily see the word by deducing from what is missing. A computer simply looks for edges, and all they find is lines! Super Captcha uses cloud processing by working in cooperation with your website to identify, stop, and ban spammers. The best way to flag a spammer is repeated failure of a CAPTCHA, but we understand humans make mistakes too, so we don’t kick off a ban from one or even 5 failures. A spam bot however will visit multiple Super Captcha enabled websites and will try and spam each one. Users that fail the captcha on multiple websites, are indeed banned. When your site helps us pop a spammer, 10 others do the same. Over the past year, we have identified over 11,000,000 spam bots! We have also determined some other interesting data, such as more than 70% of these bots are from China, 10% from Russia, and 10% from the USA. Why are we doing this? I’ve seen some really awesome WordPress communities out there and am a WordPress fan myself, but what gets me cracking on this code in the mornings is the memory of some of these awesome sites closing down because a spam bot was paid to run over this site, blasting their links every where so the page owner could gain 0.0001% in page ranking, leaving the admin with hours of work cleaning up after the bot. Many admins just give up hope and shut the site down – I did once, but I hope this never has to happen again because of a spam bot! This CAPTCHA is pre-programmed for the following forms: WordPress Login WordPress Registration Buddypress Login Buddypress Registration Comment Forms WordPress MU Blog Creation form BuddyPress Blog Creation Form LEGAL: GWD Privacy Policy | GWD Terms of Service | GWD Acceptable Use Policy SERVER REQUIREMENTS: PHP v5.3.0 or greater (Highly recommended) WordPress 4.0 or greater (Previous versions untested) DEVELOPERS Please read our forums on WordPress.org for integration development, hooks, and more. If you need help integrating this plugin into your plugin please ask on our forums.