Re CAPTCHA - Security

Security

The basis of a CAPTCHA system is to prevent automated access to a system by computer programs or "bots". On 14 December 2009, Jonathan Wilkins released a paper describing weaknesses in reCAPTCHA that allowed a solve rate of 18%.

On 1 August 2010, Chad Houck gave a presentation to the DEF CON 18 Hacking Conference detailing a method to reverse the distortion added to images which allowed a computer program to determine a valid response 10% of the time. The reCAPTCHA system was modified on 21 July 2010, before Houck was to speak on his method. Houck modified his method to what he described as an "easier" CAPTCHA to determine a valid response 31.8% of the time. Houck also mentioned security defenses in the system, including a high security lock out if an invalid response is given 32 times in a row.

On 26 May 2012, Adam, C-P and Jeffball of DC949 gave a presentation at the LayerOne hacker conference detailing how they were able to achieve an automated solution with an accuracy rate of 99.1%. Their tactic was to use a form of artificial intelligence known as machine learning to analyse the audio version of reCAPTCHA which is available for the visually impaired. Google released a new version of reCAPTCHA just hours before their talk, making major changes to both the audio and visual versions of their service. In this release, the audio version was increased in length from 8 seconds to 30 seconds, and is much more difficult to understand, both for humans as well as bots. In response to this update and the following one, the members of DC949 released two more versions of Stiltwalker which beat reCAPTCHA with an accuracy of 60.95% and 59.4% respectively. After each successive break, Google updated reCAPTCHA within a few days. According to DC949, they often reverted to features that had been previously hacked.

In an August 2012 presentation given at BsidesLV 2012, DC949 called the latest version "unfathomably impossible for humans" - they were not able to solve them manually either. The web accessibility organization WebAIM reported in May 2012, "Over 90% of respondents find CAPTCHA to be very or somewhat difficult." .

On 27 June 2012, Claudia Cruz, Fernando Uceda, and Leobardo Reyes (a group of students from México) published a paper showing a system running on reCAPTCHA images with an accuracy of 82%. The authors have not said if their system can solve recent reCAPTCHA images, although they claim their work to be intelligent OCR and robust to some changes.

reCAPTCHA frequently modifies its system, requiring hackers to frequently update their methods of decoding, which may frustrate potential abusers.