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.

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.

One of the latest tricks employed by cybercriminals is the fake CAPTCHA scam. These prompts look familiar, even harmless, but ...