Captcha Technology and Artificial Intelligence

AI has increased with efficiency quickly enough to make captcha puzzles redundant

Anticipated for the past two years, Google and Apple Inc. have officially announced their plans to discontinue the use of Captchas for all their users by the end of this year, writes Cybersecurity Insiders.

Captchas, which stand for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart,” are a combination of alphanumeric characters used by servers to differentiate humans from online bots. These captchas typically require users to solve puzzles by selecting correct images from a set of boxes arranged in different forms.

With the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence, recent security studies have shown that bots have become highly sophisticated and can now solve captchas within a mere 20-second time-frame, jeopardizing the effectiveness of captcha technology.

Olabanji Soledayo, the ESET Nigeria and Ghana cybersecurity evangelist commented that “AI has increased with efficiency quickly enough to make captcha puzzles redundant, but with increasing technology, it leads us into yet another quandary of how to improve everyone’s online experience as well as keep bots under control.

Although this may sound like a win for the online experience, the protection captchas have helped make websites safer and largely bot-free so alternatives are desperately required. Two factor authentication improves security and can also offer quick entry to websites, but this usually involves a sign-in process which does not always work for those wanting to remain anonymous and privacy-focused users. Unfortunately, AI plays a natural part in this constant game of cat and mouse, and therefore, every time a new method is announced, the technology rapidly attempts to bypass it, causing difficulties for those trying to protect its users.”

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