CAPTCHA

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CAPTCHA is an acronym for '''C'''ompletely '''A'''utomated '''P'''ublic '''T'''uring Test to Tell '''C'''omputers and '''H'''umans '''A'''part.  Commonly, these tests take the form of images of scrambled text that a human is able to read, but current optical character recognition software cannot decipher.  The most common use of a CAPTCHA is to protect web-accessible services from being abused by "bots".
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==Background==
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==Weaknesses==
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===Poorly Made CAPTCHA===
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A CAPTCHA can be described as ''poor'' in one of two ways.  Either the test fails to be human-solvable in a reasonable amount of time, or it can be solved by a computer using current AI techniques.  To the right are two CAPTCHA that fall under the first category. 
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<div style="float:right;width:315px;">
<div style="float:right;width:315px;">
   [[Image:Sin_captcha.jpg|thumb|300px|A particularly poor CAPTCHA]]
   [[Image:Sin_captcha.jpg|thumb|300px|A particularly poor CAPTCHA]]
   [[Image:Unreadable_captcha.jpg|thumb|300px|Another poor CAPTCHA]]
   [[Image:Unreadable_captcha.jpg|thumb|300px|Another poor CAPTCHA]]
</div>
</div>
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===Accessibility===
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== References ==
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==References==
# Carnegie Mellon University. 2009. [http://recaptcha.net/captcha.html What is a CAPTCHA?].
# Carnegie Mellon University. 2009. [http://recaptcha.net/captcha.html What is a CAPTCHA?].
# Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum. 2008. [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/reCAPTCHA_Science.pdf reCAPTCHA: Human-Based Character Recognition via Web Security Measures]. In ''Science''.
# Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum. 2008. [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/reCAPTCHA_Science.pdf reCAPTCHA: Human-Based Character Recognition via Web Security Measures]. In ''Science''.

Revision as of 19:34, 6 April 2009

CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Commonly, these tests take the form of images of scrambled text that a human is able to read, but current optical character recognition software cannot decipher. The most common use of a CAPTCHA is to protect web-accessible services from being abused by "bots".

Contents

Background

Weaknesses

Poorly Made CAPTCHA

A CAPTCHA can be described as poor in one of two ways. Either the test fails to be human-solvable in a reasonable amount of time, or it can be solved by a computer using current AI techniques. To the right are two CAPTCHA that fall under the first category.

A particularly poor CAPTCHA
Another poor CAPTCHA

Accessibility

References

  1. Carnegie Mellon University. 2009. What is a CAPTCHA?.
  2. Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum. 2008. reCAPTCHA: Human-Based Character Recognition via Web Security Measures. In Science.
  3. Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper, and John Langford. CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems for Security. In Eurocrypt.
  4. Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum and John Langford. 2004. Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically. In Communications of the ACM.
  5. W3C. 2005. Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA.
  6. Willis, John M. 2008. Top 10 Worst Captchas.
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