Research Unveils Improved Method To Let Computers Know You Are Human 91
An anonymous reader writes CAPTCHA services that require users to recognize and type in static distorted characters may be a method of the past, according to studies published by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Researchers focused on a broad form of gamelike CAPTCHAs, called dynamic cognitive game, or DCG, CAPTCHAs, which challenge the user to perform a gamelike cognitive task interacting with a series of dynamic images. For example, in a "ship parking" DCG challenge, the user is required to identify the boat from a set of moving objects and drag-and-drop it to the available "dock" location. The puzzle is easy for the human user to solve, but may be difficult for a computer program to figure out. The game-like nature may make the process more engaging for the user compared to conventional text-based CAPTCHAs.
There are a couple research papers available: "A Three-Way Investigation of a Game-CAPTCHA:
Automated Attacks, Relay Attacks and Usability" and "Dynamic Cognitive Game CAPTCHA Usability and
Detection of Streaming-Based Farming."
Re:I... (Score:2, Informative)
I generally just close the page whenever I see one of those awful text based captcha, where you have to squint at the screen to even be able to tell 10% of the time what is written on those awful blurry squiggles. Whatever you're selling, unless I can read it and type it easily/quickly, it ain't worth my time.
you sound like the helpless baby boomers that bug the staff and ask questions when the answer to those questions is right in front of them. dont you have a homeowners association to run, a voting booth to visit, or a AARP magazine to read?
As with all other CAPTCHA 'alternatives', (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that you can really only come up with a finite number of these, and once an attacker has a large enough sample of them (say, 10%), he can simply write a bit of code to 'solve' each one.
The thing about CAPTCHAs that makes them great is that you can randomly generate a huge bunch of them.
Anyway, the headline so completely misrepresents this research that it basically says the opposite of what the researchers are saying. The researchers, in fact, created an automated system to solve DCGs! Their contribution was a system that detects 'crowd-sourcing' attacks - attacks where shady companies pay volunteers pennies to solve CAPTCHAs by hand. The researchers said they are going to work on improved DCGs that can't be solved automatically, but nothing of the sort is being unveiled here.