captcha en Stanford Researchers Teach Machines to Beat Captchas <!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u94712/d33ce85e4455fe21dde7f7bb3cb1a1fa92d3cd7b-captchas.png" alt="captcha" width="228" height="167" style="float: right;" />We’ve all struggled with those often unreadable security Captcha codes from time to time, but if some <a href="">new research</a> out of Stanford is any clue, machines might be better at it than us very soon. By using machine vision algorithms, the Stanford team was able to defeat 66% of Visa’s Captchas, 70% of those used by Blizzard, and about a quarter of Wikipedia’s Captchas. This may spell trouble for a multitude of other sites, as well.</p> <p>While some of these numbers might not sound like a huge problem, the team suggests that any hit rate over 1% means Captcha is too broken to continue in use. Since the cost associated with having a computer try again and again to solve the Captcha is so low, those with malicious intent could blow through this security measure with no problem. Most companies use various layers of security, but Captchas are relied upon heavily for weeding out bots.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Stanford team had no luck whatsoever with Google’s ReCaptcha system, which is used widely. This indicates that the visual filtering and de-blurring techniques aren’t entirely there, but its success with other systems could mean it’s just a matter of time.&nbsp;</p> bots captcha machine learning machine vision recaptcha Security News Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:06:58 +0000 Ryan Whitwam 21106 at The Foolproof Captcha: Advanced Math <!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u94712/math.png" alt="math" width="228" height="93" style="float: right;" />Anyone that has ever used the internet has experienced the scourge that is spam bots. If you want to protect your favorite site from spammers, the folks at Croatia's Ruđer Bošković Institute have the answer. It is absolutely guaranteed to <a href="">keep non-humans out</a>. The site presents visitors with a bit of advanced math they must work out.</p> <p>This isn't just a captcha, this requires real know how and the vast majority of humans (forget the bots) won't be able to do it. The site helpfully lets you know that if you can't make heads or tails of the problem, you can reload and "you'll (probably) get another, easier question." The science-types at Ruđer Bošković Institute seem pretty keen on keeping out the riffraff.&nbsp;</p> <p>The LA Times does point out that Wolfram Alpha can solve the problem for you, but that still relies on you knowing how to input the problem correctly. Is there a good middle ground here?</p> captcha math Privacy Security wolfram alpha News Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:05:57 +0000 Ryan Whitwam 17490 at Google Acquires Book-Reader/Bot-Buster reCAPTCHA <!--paging_filter--><p>Google announced today that they acquired <a href="">reCAPTCHA</a>, the popular anti-bot service. reCAPTCHA offers a first line of defense against internet bots that exploit web forms with malicious intent. They are also widely known for their participation in helping to digitize print media formats. No surprises in why Google would be interested in such a project.</p> <p>ReCAPTCHA advertises that they are currently helping to digitize old print versions of the New York Times. However, it’s not too far a leap to assume Google will be using reCAPTCHAs to bolster its own text scanning efforts (<a href="">Google Books</a>). Approximately 200 million captchas are solved by humans each day, and each one moves digitizing projects one step closer to improving the way computers recognize words on paper. </p> <p>“Improving the availability and accessibility of all the information on the Internet is really important to us, so we're looking forward to advancing this technology with the reCAPTCHA team” said Luis von Ahn (co-founder of reCAPTCHA) and Will Cathcart (Google Product manager) on the <a href="">official Google blog</a>. </p> <p align="center"><img src="/files/u93546/09172009-02.jpg" width="405" height="165" /> </p> captcha Google google books recaptcha Software Software News News Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:01:05 +0000 Jason Barry 7929 at Microsoft Wants to Use CAPTCHAs to Serve Ads <!--paging_filter--><p>Microsoft wants to pioneer a <a href="/Microsoft%20wants%20to%20use%20CAPTCHAs%20to%20serve%20ads">new form of online advertising by using human interactive proofs, popularly known as CAPTCHAs, to deliver ads</a>. The idea was revealed in a patent application that Microsoft had filed with the US Patent &amp; Trademark Office way back in February 2008.</p> <p>According to <a href=";Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PG01&amp;p=1&amp;u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=%2220090204819%22.PGNR.&amp;OS=DN/20090204819&amp;RS=DN/20090204819">the patent application</a>, made public on August 13, the Redmond-based goliath intends to replace ordinary CAPTCHAs with images, slogans, musical jingles, or other information related to a particular product. In order to gain access to content on the other side of the sponsored CAPTCHA, the user will have to type in the name of the featured product or other related text. </p> <p>“Unlike so much web-based advertising that accompanies popular web portals such as search and news sites that users can easily ignore, here the user must actively engage in reading and understanding the content in the advertisement in the HIP (human interactive proof) challenge in order to identify the solution to the challenge,&quot; the patent filing reads. </p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u46168/adhip.jpg" width="250" height="250" /></div> ads captcha microsoft patent News Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:09:31 +0000 Pulkit Chandna 7562 at