On 17 April 2008, RapidShare has again updated their CAPTCHA system and brought back the happy hours. The new CAPTCHA code now contains more than 4 characters and it ask you to enter all letters having a cat. It says “No premium user. Please enter all letters having a CAT below.” If you look carefully, you will find all the animals are not Cats. Some are Dogs which is very similar looking and confuses people. Sometimes even I have problems identifying which is cat and which is dog and can only get it right after a few tries.
Next, I want to talk about the RapidShare Happy Hours. You will get a message that says “The RapidShare Happy Hours are active right now. Have fun!” Their happy hours means that the download ticket waiting time and CAPTCHA will be totally disabled. However, after you’ve finished downloading a file, you will still need to wait for X amount of minutes before you can download the next file from RapidShare. I do not see a point in their happy hours… I don’t think they have a specific time when the happy hours will start or end. RapidShare only mentioned that when their servers have enough spare bandwidth, they will make it easier for free users to download from RapidShare.
These updates are meant to break all those third party tools (Cryptload, (E)lephant, RSD, USDownloader) that can download from RapidShare as a free user as if they were a premium user.
I’ve spoken to Apokalypser, the creator of Cryptload, he mentioned that it is tough to crack this current CAPTCHA code with CATS and he is unaware of any method that can automatically recognize cats inside rapidshare CAPTCHA image. However, there is a method I know called CaptchaExchangeServer which can help to automate inputting rapidshare captcha code with cats.
CaptchaExchangeServer is not a software, but a service. When you are downloading something from RapidShare and you are not in front of the PC, another user (who is somewhere on the net) is writing the CAPTCHA for you. The user will help you because every time he writes a correct CAPTCHA for another user, he gets 1 point. So when he wants to download something, some other user, by the same idea is writing the captcha for him. He will then loose a point. Currently there is a bonus in this system. If you have less of 1 points, and waited for more then 5 minutes in queue, and there is no captchas for recognition, you’ll get 1 point automatically. This system currently only works on USDownloader. From what I experienced in CaptchaExchangeServer system, there are not many people spending their points but many trying to earn points. I had to wait more than 30 minutes for my CAPTCHA recognition turn.
I also heard of people saying that it is possible to recognize CAPTCHA code with ABBYY FineReader. I’ve tried it but did not work. If you know how, perhaps you can share it with me.
Good news is during RapidShare Happy Hours, we can use Cryptload, RSDownloader and USDownloader to automate the downloading. The author of those tools has updated their program to support RapidShare Happy Hours. As for (E)lephant, it hasn’t been updated since 16th March 2008 and it doesn’t work with Happy Hours. There’s only one small problem that is we have to wait till RapidShare Happy Hours is active, then we can proceed downloading from RapidShare without limitations using those third party tools.
Instead of manually checking for RapidShare Happy Hours, I found a small tool which automatically checks for RapidShare Happy Hours. If the tool detected that the RapidShare Happy Hours is active, it will notify you via popup and you can configure it to run Cryptload, RSDownloader or USDownloader and start downloading. Very useful so you can go to sleep and let everything run by itself.
The tool is called RapidShare Happy-Hour Checker.
I couldn’t find any information about this tool. I don’t know who created it nor where is the official website. I scanned it with 31 types of antivirus in VirusTotal and it detected nothing at all.
[ Download RapidShare Happy-Hour Checker ]
Another tool I found is called HappyCat by Perrin and 20lives.
I couldn’t find the official website for this tool as well. Tried it but it doesn’t work as it reports “Not a Happy Hour” during Happy Hours. Another thing I don’t like about this tool is it requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. I’ve included the download link in case you’d like to try it yourself.
[ Download HappyCat ]
Cryptload can automatically start downloading when it is launched provided if you set it to start Immediately when adding the links.
In short, it means you add the links and set it to start Immediately and then close Cryptload. Then open up RapidShare Happy-Hour Checker and set it to run CryptLoad.exe when it detects rapidshare happy hours. There’s a small bug in CryptLoad which is there must be more than 1 files in queue. If you only have 1 file queued in Cryptload, it won’t automatically start downloading when it is launched.
RS Downloader too can start downloading immediately when launched but it is not configured as default. You’ll need to go to Einstellungen tab > Sonstiges, CHECK Downloads beim RSD start starten and click Speichern button to save the setting.
As for USDownloader, it will automatically start downloading the links when it is launched. No configuration needed. I will update you all again if there are new methods to recognize cats inside RapidShare CAPTCHA images.