DEV Community

Cover image for Take your automation to next level with 2captcha
Rakesh Potnuru
Rakesh Potnuru

Posted on • Edited on • Originally published at blog.itsrakesh.co

Take your automation to next level with 2captcha

Captcha is used in websites to avoid spam. Now, there are lots of services and tools you can use to crack the Captcha. But why? Why does someone want to crack the Captchas? Let's take an example- You want to build automation software to publish a post on some website that requires you to solve a Captcha in order to post there and you want to bypass that Captcha. Don't ask why someone want to automate this because there may be many reasons maybe you want to repost that same post on different sites to reach more audience.

Some Captchas like text captchas can be easily cracked with some machine learning and image recognition stuff. But with reCaptcha it's not possible to crack with code, we have to solve it manually. So how can we overcome this 🤔? And the only solution is to actually solve it manually. But what about our automation software 😞? Don't worry, here comes 2Captcha into rescue.

2Captcha is a Captcha solving software to bypass any type of captcha. Wait, wait, wait... the only solution is to manually solve the Captcha, then how 2Captcha is able to solve these Captchas? Because these Captchas are solved by real humans.

How does it work?

How this works depends on different types of Captchas. But here is the overview.

  1. You send the puzzle.
  2. Workers at 2Captcha solves the puzzle and send back the answer.
  3. You use that response to automatically solve the puzzle.

2Captcha mind map

Let's see how to implement this

2Captcha supports many different Captchas, in this blog, we will solve reCAPTCHA V2.

Prerequisites

  1. Signup for a 2Captcha account.
    • Choose I'm a developer.
  2. Get the API key.

Try out

  • Open any website that uses reCaptcha v2.

reCAPTCHA

  • Inspect the element and find data-sitekey

Screenshot 2022-02-24 111932.png

  • Now we have to make HTTP get request to http://2captcha.com/in.php

The get request we have to make:

http://2captcha.com/in.php?key=YOUR_API_KEY&method=userrecaptcha&googlekey=DATA-SITEKEY&pageurl=WEBSITE_URL_CONTAINING_CAPTCHA
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

4 Params

  • key - Your API key
  • method - userrecaptcha
  • googlekey - reCaptcha data-sitekey which we got in previous step
  • pageurl - URL of the page that contains reCaptcha

Here is an example:

http://2captcha.com/in.php?key=1abc234de56fab7c89012d34e56fa7b8&method=userrecaptcha&googlekey=6Le-wvkSVVABCPBMRTvw0Q4Muexq1bi0DJwx_mJ-&pageurl=http://mysite.com/page/with/recaptcha
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • If you did everything correctly, you will get a response like this:
{
    "status": 1,
    "request":"2122988149"
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Wait for 15-20 seconds and make a get request to http://2captcha.com/res.php

The get request we have to make:

http://2captcha.com/res.php?key=YOUR_API_KEY&action=get&id=REQUEST_ID
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

3 Parameters

  • key - Your API key
  • action - get
  • id - "request id" which we got from previous step

Here is an example:

http://2captcha.com/res.php?key=1abc234de56fab7c89012d34e56fa7b8&action=get&id=2122988149
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • 2Captcha solves the reCaptcha and send back a token which will look like this:
03AHJ_Vuve5Asa4koK3KSMyUkCq0vUFCR5Im4CwB7PzO3dCxIo11i53epEraq-uBO5mVm2XRikL8iKOWr0aG50sCuej9bXx5qcviUGSm4iK4NC_Q88flavWhaTXSh0VxoihBwBjXxwXuJZ-WGN5Sy4dtUl2wbpMqAj8Zwup1vyCaQJWFvRjYGWJ_TQBKTXNB5CCOgncqLetmJ6B6Cos7qoQyaB8ZzBOTGf5KSP6e-K9niYs772f53Oof6aJeSUDNjiKG9gN3FTrdwKwdnAwEYX-F37sI_vLB1Zs8NQo0PObHYy0b0sf7WSLkzzcIgW9GR0FwcCCm1P8lB-50GQHPEBJUHNnhJyDzwRoRAkVzrf7UkV8wKCdTwrrWqiYDgbrzURfHc2ESsp020MicJTasSiXmNRgryt-gf50q5BMkiRH7osm4DoUgsjc_XyQiEmQmxl5sqZP7aKsaE-EM00x59XsPzD3m3YI6SRCFRUevSyumBd7KmXE8VuzIO9lgnnbka4-eZynZa6vbB9cO3QjLH0xSG3-egcplD1uLGh79wC34RF49Ui3eHwua4S9XHpH6YBe7gXzz6_mv-o-fxrOuphwfrtwvvi2FGfpTexWvxhqWICMFTTjFBCEGEgj7_IFWEKirXW2RTZCVF0Gid7EtIsoEeZkPbrcUISGmgtiJkJ_KojuKwImF0G0CsTlxYTOU2sPsd5o1JDt65wGniQR2IZufnPbbK76Yh_KI2DY4cUxMfcb2fAXcFMc9dcpHg6f9wBXhUtFYTu6pi5LhhGuhpkiGcv6vWYNxMrpWJW_pV7q8mPilwkAP-zw5MJxkgijl2wDMpM-UUQ_k37FVtf-ndbQAIPG7S469doZMmb5IZYgvcB4ojqCW3Vz6Q
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • Now we have to insert that token into our reCAPTCHA textarea.

To do this,

  • While you are in dev tools, go to console, type this in console and press enter.
document.getElementById("g-recaptcha-response").innerHTML="TOKEN_FROM_2CAPTCHA";
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Screenshot 2022-02-24 124204.png

  • And then submit the form.

That's it! We solved the captcha without actually solving the captcha.

All this makes sense when we use this somewhere. As you are building automation software, try to automate this.

Few things to note:

  1. We are not hacking anything.
  2. As these captchas are solved by real humans, the results are accurate.

Hope you found this useful. Follow for more.

Top comments (0)