Google Street View Research indicates CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA are machine readable – Why Refridgerator Bots Sentinels in Days of Future Past

The Editor, Sir:

“It’s important to note that simply identifying the text in CAPTCHA puzzles correctly doesn’t mean that reCAPTCHA itself is broken or ineffective. On the contrary, these findings have helped us build additional safeguards against bad actors in reCAPTCHA.”

Google Product Manager Vinay Shet commenting on the company’s online security blog about their algorithm that can beat CAPTCHA

Google has cracked BOTH CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) and reCAPTCHA, the system of Verification to see if you are a machine or a person as stated in “GOOGLE CRACKS CAPTCHA WITH AN ALGORITHM THAT’S 99.8 PERCENT ACCURATE”, published April 17, 2014 By Mike Epstein, DigitalTrends.

 This was done using a series of Letters or numbers that has to be repeated to verify if you are…well… a human This is not Good, Google. This….is bad…..very…bad!

More troubling, in their Research, the Google Street View Team also discovered, to their surprise, that their algorithm can also crack reCAPTCHA and offer answers that are 99.8% accurate!

That suggests that both CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, which is supposedly an improvement on CAPTCHA as it allegedly uses “advanced risk analysis techniques”, are equally susceptible to hackers or Bot programs with the right software algorithm and the right amount of processing Power to manipulate photographic images.

The Google Street View Team uses their algorithm to read Street signs and place names gleaned from image data captured and are 90% accurate. The images are captured when their Street View Vehicles roll through a city with their 360 degree viewing angle cameras.

These images are them taken back to Headquarters where in-house software creates 3D renderings of Cities and Town that they drive through. This via using advanced photo-stitching software, which contain the algorithm which can read human made text, which were basically unreadable – until this announcement.

This now means that Google’s LBS (Location Based Services) all benefit by having the ability to glean more information from these 360 degree mappings made when they roll through these cities or towns.

CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA are machine readable – Bots can take over in Days of Future Past

But as it relates to CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, their research suggests that at 99.8%, this algorithm must be very robust or the words in the CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA panel presented on most websites is too clear, making them machine readable with a Camera attached to a computer running this Text-reading Photo-analysis algorithm!

Apparently the “advanced risk analysis techniques” probably involves cookies that monitor activity on the Website as well as the host computer to determine if there may be a program running. This as by logic, if it is a real human being, both before, during and after accessing a certain website, they may also be doing other things on the computer.

If the computer seems devoid of activity and appears to be running some code-cracking programs that appears to be loading certain programs into memory that have code instructions geared at reading Text combine with a camera to detect images, then in all likelihood it may be a machine. Apparently the reCAPTCHA snooping abilities aren’t so great, as Google’s Street View Team managed to defeat it 99.8% of the time!

The discovery, made by Google Street View Team, means that with the right visual recognition algorithm, similar to what Google has, it’s possible for any computer or even potentially a Bot programming harnessing the processing power of a Mainframe or basic Server to read any text or matter how it’s arranged. This is a key pre-requisite for a truly sentient Artificial Intelligence System to function in a world with Humans that don’t all write and form their letters the same way.

This is very bad, as it now means that if this algorithm leaks out to the public, and it will eventually, it’ll mean that websites that previously were inaccessible by Bot Programs could now be easily compromised. Bots and programs already account for 61% of traffic on the Internet, according to Analyst Incapsula as I’d reported in my Geezam blog article entitled “61% of all Traffic on the Internet is generated by bots”.

Now that they can read as we humans can read, it’s only a matter of time before they hack yet another fridge as described in my blog article entitled “Proofpoint says Refridgerator hacked and used to send Spam email - Internet of Things Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines for hacker's DDOS and Spambots” and launched another attack.

This time, they have the advantage of disguising themselves as actual compromised accounts which they can sign up to, now that CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA are Machine Readable in these X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)!

….soon the AI Sentinel Refrigerators will attack…and I’ll be ready with my EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) Weapon and my Jamaican Cutlass!!

Here’s the link:

Google reCAPTCHA Website