Novel CAPTCHA schemes

Ville Saalo
9.12.2010
Agenda

What are CAPTCHAs?

Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA

The transparent letter scheme

Wrap up
Agenda

What are CAPTCHAs?

Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA

The transparent letter scheme

Wrap up
What are CAPTCHAs? (1/3)

CAPTCHA: Completely Automated Public Turing

test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Prevents bots from
automatically accessing
various services
Various types:
Text-based
Sound-based
Image-based
Source: CAPTCHA.net
General or domain specific
What are CAPTCHAs? (2/3)

Example of an image-
based CAPTCHA:
Asirra

Source: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/asirra/
What are CAPTCHAs? (3/3)

Example of a domain-
specific CAPTCHA:
CAPNTHLA for
NetHack players.
Source: http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/CAPNTHLA

Source: http://nethackwiki.
com/wiki/File:Nh343-vt-
ibmgraphics.png
Agenda

What are CAPTCHAs?

Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA

The transparent letter scheme

Wrap up
Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA (1/2)

A paper called A Low-cost Attack on a Microsoft

CAPTCHA by Yan & El Ahmad, 2008.

Generally two phases:

segmentation (hard!)
recognition (easy!)
Source: Yan & El Ahmad, 2008

Focuses on the segmentation challenge

Six stages
Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA (2/2)

1. Pre-processing

2. Vertical segmentation

3. Color filling segmentation

4. Thick arc removal

5. Locating connected
characters

6. Segmenting connected
characters
Source: Yan & El Ahmad, 2008
Agenda

What are CAPTCHAs?

Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA

The transparent letter scheme

Wrap up
The transparent letter scheme

Relies on heavily overlapping letters and large

clutter objects
The transparent letter scheme

How do you create a CAPTCHA scheme like this?

Start with random text, random fonts:
The transparent letter scheme

Push the letters together:

Try doing the vertical segmentation phase now!

Not very readable anymore? Wait for it...
The transparent letter scheme

Make the letters transparent:

The transparent letter scheme

Add large clutter objects:

The transparent letter scheme

Add holes to make the objects more like letters:

The transparent letter scheme

Add fine clutter:

The transparent letter scheme

Complement with some distortions:

Agenda

What are CAPTCHAs?

Attack on the Microsoft CAPTCHA

The transparent letter scheme

Wrap up
Wrap up

Many kinds of CAPTCHAs exist

Computers are excellent at recognizing characters

Therefore, text-based CAPTCHAs should rely on

making segmentation hard

The Transparent letter scheme is a new attempt on

that