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Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

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Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#31

Post by fuelfive »

daffodil2 wrote: post #14

Wait, it's not clear to me from the blog post. Did they make a system that obsoletes reCAPTCHA? If so, it's just a matter of time before the spam systems catch up, correct? If so, what's the successor to CAPTCHA? Or is the web just going to be full of spam in the future?

Digging in to the journal article, the technique they use can only scale to captchas with 8 characters or less, so having a longer word is a simple fix.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#33

Post by LaGrange »

astrange wrote: post #5
adyus wrote: post #2

In effect, Google computer vision got so good that they made their own system obsolete. This is a good thing. I still think the only reliable way to confirm identity (or humanity) online is an email or SMS verification. Recently, receiving a 2-factor SMS code took less time than the page refresh prompting me to enter it.

That confirms identity, but it doesn't confirm humanity. Robots just need to have a SIM card! I think it would annoy many human users as well.

What you actually do if the verification is important enough (not often) is ask for a phone number, and have a human being call them. Some e-commerce sites do that, presumably ones exposed to frequent fraud, for example http://www.shatteredcrystal.com/, a game code reseller.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#34

Post by sidko »

Keyframe wrote: post #29

Now that programs are better and better at solving CAPTCHA - that means that correct CAPTCHA input will mean the opposite from what it means now. Since programs are better at solving CAPTCAH than humans, correct input (3/3 for example) will mean it's a robot. Thus, CAPTCHA becomes relevant again.

And how would you deal with the fact that an algorithm could always intentionally provide the wrong answer? It's a losing game.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#35

Post by jrochkind1 »

From that caption "CAPTCHA images correctly solved by the algorithm", there are at least two of them that I'm not sure _I_ can correctly solve on the first try.

Which is generally my experience with captcha's these days, I only have about a 50% success rate.

CAPTCHA is a failed strategy, time to give it up.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#36

Post by yaddayadda »

dnlbyl wrote: post #6

99% is probably better than my success rate with reCAPTCHA...

Looking at the four examples they give in the article, I'd likely only get one or two on the first go.

- ntrtyLt (I'm mostly confident)

- tmincrw (I'm really confident)

- rrnmtht (I'm not at all confident of my answer, but I'm really confident that r's, n's, and m's should be prohibited next to each other in captchas like this!)

- MCruncy (I'm really confident of my interpretation, but are capital letters supposed to be reported as capitals on this captcha system, or is this one of the systems that we're only supposed to submit lower case characters even when the character that we're viewing is upper case?)

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#37

Post by LanceH »

sidko wrote: post #34
Keyframe wrote: post #29

Now that programs are better and better at solving CAPTCHA - that means that correct CAPTCHA input will mean the opposite from what it means now. Since programs are better at solving CAPTCAH than humans, correct input (3/3 for example) will mean it's a robot. Thus, CAPTCHA becomes relevant again.

And how would you deal with the fact that an algorithm could always intentionally provide the wrong answer? It's a losing game.

Presumably humans would see some pattern that isn't there. So you have to get the correct wrong result.

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#38

Post by Blahah »

zobzu wrote: post #32

The program solves captcha that I, as a human, cannot solve. Pretty sure that means captcha of that type are definitely dead.

Same here. Over the last few years captchas have been getting more and more difficult for me to decipher. It often takes me two attempts to get them right. Particularly annoying on google groups when you need to add a lot of members and you have to do a captcha for every ten members you add.

Whatever replaces captcha, I really hope it's less frustrating for the actual humans

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#39

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #35

From that caption "CAPTCHA images correctly solved by the algorithm", there are at least two of them that I'm not sure _I_ can correctly solve on the first try. Which is generally my experience with captcha's these days, I only have about a 50% success rate. CAPTCHA is a failed strategy, time to give it up.

Discussed this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419667

Re: Google's Street View computer vision can beat reCAPTCHA with 99% accuracy

#40

Post by wpietri »

LanceH wrote: post #37
sidko wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would you deal with the fact that an algorithm could always intentionally provide the wrong answer? It's a losing game.

Presumably humans would see some pattern that isn't there. So you have to get the correct wrong result.

Ooh, that's interesting. I was just talking with somebody yesterday about how his bosses had him spend six months trying to make a new financial system bug-compatible with an old financial system, one to which they had lost the source code. They eventually gave up and just kept using the old system so they could be consistent with previous publications.

Making something bug-compatible with the human vision system might be much harder than pure recognition.

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