what is pow-buster fr?

Some websites use "proof of work" challenges instead of traditional CAPTCHAs to filter out bots. These systems (like Anubis, mCaptcha, Cerberus, go-away, and Cap.js) make your browser solve computational puzzles before granting access. PoW Buster is a tool that solves these puzzles much faster than a browser can, so non-browser clients like command-line downloaders, feed checkers, or other automation tools can get past these challenges without running JavaScript or burning battery life. At a technical level, the tool uses highly optimized native code written in Rust that takes advantage of specialized CPU instructions (like AVX-512 and SHA-NI) to compute hash puzzles at speeds far exceeding what browser JavaScript can achieve, the benchmarks show roughly 80-100 million hashes per second per thread. It supports multiple proof-of-work schemes and can run as a command-line tool or as a browser extension. You point it at a URL, it fetches the challenge, solves it, and hands you back the authentication token you need. The primary audience is developers running automation tools or non-browser clients who hit websites protected by these PoW systems. For example, if you have a CLI tool that needs to download from a site behind Anubis (like a git repository mirror), you can run the solver, get the cookie, and proceed. There is also a browser extension for users who want to reduce CPU usage while browsing, though the author suggests a simpler alternative extension for most people. The author frames this as research highlighting a structural weakness in browser-based proof-of-work systems. Their argument is that PoW was designed for global consensus (like cryptocurrency mining), not for maintaining a fair difficulty margin between browsers and native code. The benchmarks demonstrate that native implementations can be orders of magnitude faster than browser JavaScript, meaning website operators may be overestimating how much protection these systems actually provide against motivated actors. The project includes an ethical disclaimer emphasizing that this is not a vulnerability but a performance analysis, and that operators deploying PoW systems bear responsibility for understanding these limitations.