Engadget RSS Feed http://www.engadget.com Engadget http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif Engadget http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2013 AOL Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/ <![CDATA[Google reCAPTCHAs now featuring Street View addresses, 221b Baker St. to get even more famous]]> http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/google-recaptchas-now-featuring-street-view-addresses-221b-bake/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/google-recaptchas-now-featuring-street-view-addresses-221b-bake/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/30/google-recaptchas-now-featuring-street-view-addresses-221b-bake/?utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget#comments ImageIf you've enjoyed decrypting the often frustratingly skewed (and occasionally humorously juxtaposed) reCAPTCHAs, you might be a bit sad to learn that Google is mixing things up with some rather more boring numerals. The combinations of two words are typically used as part of a registration form to ensure the registrant is, indeed, human. Google is now replacing one of the words in some of its reCAPTCHA forms with photos gleaned from Street View service. Google says it uses these numbers internally to improve the accuracy of Street View and that pulling them into reCAPTCHAs is part of an "experiment" to "determine if using imagery might also be an effective way to further refine our tools for fighting machine and bot-related abuse online."

In other words, Google's bots are already capable of decoding these numbers, which makes this all sound like a bit of a challenge to the rest of the OCR-loving coders in the world. Any takers?

[Image Credit: dirtbag]

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]]> botcaptchagooglehackocroptical character recognitionOpticalCharacterRecognitionrecaptchastreet viewStreetViewturingturing testTuringTest Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:01:00 -0400 21|20204713 <![CDATA[Stanford program cracks text-based CAPTCHAs, shelters the replicants among us]]> http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/stanford-program-cracks-text-based-captchas-shelters-the-replic/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/stanford-program-cracks-text-based-captchas-shelters-the-replic/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/stanford-program-cracks-text-based-captchas-shelters-the-replic/?utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget#comments CAPTCHAs. In the absence of a Voigt-Kampff apparatus, they're what separate the humans from the only-posing-to-be-human. And now three Stanford researchers have further blurred that line with Decaptcha, a program that uses image processing, segmentation and a spell-checker to defeat text-based CAPTCHAs. Elie Bursztien, Matthieu Martin and John Mitchell pitted Decaptcha against a number of sites: it passed 66% of the challenges on Visa's Authorize.net and 70% at Blizzard Entertainment. At the high end, the program beat 93% of MegaUpload's tests; at other end, it only bested 2% of those from Skyrock. Of the 15 sites tried, only two completely repelled Decaptcha's onslaught -- Google and reCaptcha. So what did the researchers learn from this? Randomization makes for better security; random lengths and character sizes tended to thwart Decaptcha, as did waving text. How long that will remain true is anyone's guess, as presumably SkyNet is working on a CAPTCHA-killer of its own.

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]]> captchacaptchasDecaptchadeckardElie BursztienElieBursztienGoogleJohn MitchellJohnMitchellMatthieu MartinMatthieuMartinMegaUploadPhillip K. DickPhillipK.DickreCaptchareplicantskynetSkyrockStanfordVoigt-Kampff apparatusVoigt-kampffApparatus Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:40:00 -0400 21|20096851