reCAPTCHA stopped working - Invalid Encryption

Question

I have been using reCAPTCHA on my site for a while now and suddenly I realized it has stopped to work. The reCAPTCHA is there, however after verifying correctly, the response FAILS which makes the submit of the form fail.

On the client side console, the browser gives an error:

Uncaught (in promise) Invalid Encryption.

I have tried to search for this error but can not find anything similar. After submitting the form, the server side verification in PHP fails. I am not sure if the error above is related, however, it has not been there before.

Example page of client side integration:

<html>
<head>
    <title>reCAPTCHA demo: Simple page</title>
     <script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js" async defer> 
</script>
</head>
  <body>
    <form action="?" method="POST">
      <div class="g-recaptcha" data-sitekey="your_site_key"></div>
      <br/>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
   </body>
</html>

Server side verification PHP:

$response = json_decode( 
    file_get_contents( 
 "https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/siteverifysecret=MY_SECRET&response=".$_POST['g-recaptcha-response']."&remoteip=".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] ), true );

if($response['success'] == false){
    echo "FAIL";
} else {
    //do something
}

I have followed the instructions found here.

For me the server response still matches the code that the client gets when it hits google. Pretty strange though, nonetheless. — quickshiftin, Oct 21 '18 at 19:33
I'm using zend framework's form module to render ReCaptcha elements and I started experiencing this issue too. — Rolando Isidoro, Oct 22 '18 at 15:47
Using https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-google-invisible-recaptcha and having the same issue at the moment.. — ronnyrr, Oct 23 '18 at 13:06
I'm having this issue too. Using VueJS vue-recaptcha component (https://www.npmjs.com/package/vue-recaptcha) — Gabriel Ferreira Rosalino, Oct 23 '18 at 14:40

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 23 '18 at 15:59

3

I ran into the same problem yesterday. It looks as though Google has acknowledged the problem and is working toward fixing it. They claim it shouldn't affect the overall function of the reCAPTCHA.

I obtained this information here.

Below is a screen shot of the conversation.

Screen shot of Google forum

edited Oct 23 '18 at 15:59

SIGSTACKFAULT

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1
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answered Oct 23 '18 at 15:37

Jessica

31
2

I am confused, it has been working previously and suddenly the validation fails. I did try to implement it on my local web server where reCaptcha validation succeeded (even though the console error persists). However, the website hosted by a web hosting provider (miss-hosting) does not. I use completely identical code (except the tokens ofc) for testing on my local web server and get different results. Strange, strange... – Emir Husic Oct 24 '18 at 17:15

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 05 '18 at 07:13

Seems like the answer from Jessica answers for the error in the browser. However, additionaly to the error, my reCaptcha validation failed. I updated the PHP version of my web server from 7.0 to 7.1. This solved my issue. So if you have troubles with the verification and not only the error message in the browser, check the PHP version of your web server.

reCAPTCHA stopped working - Invalid Encryption

2 Answers2

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