(The basics of) what this actually does, because nothing is magic:
In the Reddit screenshot we see three instructions:
Press & hold the Win key + R
In verification window, press Ctrl key + V
Press Enter key on your keyboard
(We also see some odd grammatical errors - "Complete these verification steps use keyboard" instead of "using keyboard" or "To complete" - which should be a red flag as well.)
The first instruction - Win+R - opens the Run dialog:
You might notice that this looks like it's part of Windows; that's because it is. This dialog isn't part of the CAPTCHA but part of your own computer (a huge red flag!!)
The description says that Windows will open a file for you, but it's actually more advanced than that: this can run any command-line command you type into it. (If you don't know what that means, the command line is a way to interact with your computer by typing commands, and lets you do basically anything Windows can do.)
The second instruction - Ctrl+V - you might recognize: it pastes whatever you have copied to the clipboard.
Usually, you'd have copied this with a Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X, but websites are able to modify what's in your clipboard directly. (You might have experienced this with something like the "Share results" button in Wordle.)
In this case, they've copied a malicious command into your clipboard already, so when you hit Ctrl+V the command gets pasted directly into the Run dialog. I don't know the details of the specific command, but it has the power to do basically anything you can: download files, run programs, delete files, whatever.
The third instruction - Enter - is the same as hitting the OK button in the dialog: Windows executes the command you've pasted in for it.
In short, Win+R opens a tool to use commands, Ctrl+V pastes in a malicious command, and Enter executes it.
Many of you might be saying, hey, I already know what Ctrl+V does! That's great! I'm just trying to clarify how exactly the keyboard presses "run a command that can download malware onto your device", so you or anyone can understand what your keypresses are doing in general (not just in this specific fake CAPTCHA attack), and be aware when they might be doing something dangerous.
(That being said, if you scrolled past the entire post, don't press keyboard shortcuts that start with Win or Ctrl or Cmd or anything like that if you don't know what they're doing. That's all.)
origamiaround
romaincrisis
gamechangershow
pixelskylines
titsay
areudirty
blakekathryn
2087
snowghoul
