Random thought: Why can't strange curvy letters be automatically read?

[BlueBear]

A post in Internet gambling has led me to think, why can't strange curvy letters be automatically detected by OCR technology? Surely this is a trivial image processing problem isn't it? Such technology is frequently used to prevent the automated bots from mass registering free e-mail accounts and the such.

[stinkypete]

they can be. but it's not trivial to program it into your pokerbot, which is why party has added their new thingy.

[Subfallen]

[ QUOTE ]
A post in Internet gambling has led me to think, why can't strange curvy letters be automatically detected by OCR technology? Surely this is an enormously difficult image processing problem isn't it? Such technology is frequently used to prevent the automated bots from mass registering free e-mail accounts and the such.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP.

[mother_brain]

They also have a few extra lines and whatnot through them don't they?

[TStoneMBD]

a bot can read this stuff, which is why you have gradually seen these scribbly lines get more and more complicated to read within the past couple of years. they used to be a little distored, now they are barely readable by human eye. a bot can certainly be programmed to read these things, but whether one has been programmed and whether its been circulated yet i dont know.

[boondoggle]

[ QUOTE ]
a bot can certainly be programmed to read these things, but whether one has been programmed and whether its been circulated yet i dont know.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are an idiot. Where do all of these idiots come from?

cheers
Boon

[Randy_Refeld]

[ QUOTE ]
which is why you have gradually seen these scribbly lines get more and more complicated to read within the past couple of years. they used to be a little distored, now they are barely readable by human eye

[/ QUOTE ]

I might be in trouble soon, it often take me two or three tries to get it right becasue there is always a letter or two I can't make out.

[LazyRobot]

Why exactly is he an idiot? For thinking a bot can read many of them or because he doesn't know if there is code circulating?

[boondoggle]

[ QUOTE ]
Why exactly is he an idiot? For thinking a bot can read many of them or because he doesn't know if there is code circulating?

[/ QUOTE ]

He is an idiot for stating in a trivial way that it is easy to program around a CAPTCHA. There are projects involved which have only had some success against weaker CAPTCHA algorithms.



cheers
Boon

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Why exactly is he an idiot? For thinking a bot can read many of them or because he doesn't know if there is code circulating?

[/ QUOTE ]

He is an idiot. A CAPTCHA cannot be programmed around.


[/ QUOTE ]

I must be some kind of super-idiot because I don't even know what a CAPTCHA is.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]

I must be some kind of super-idiot because I don't even know what a CAPTCHA is.

[/ QUOTE ]

CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
a bot can certainly be programmed to read these things, but whether one has been programmed and whether its been circulated yet i dont know.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are an idiot. Where do all of these idiots come from?

cheers
Boon

[/ QUOTE ]

Correction, he is a rather bright person and you are the moron. He is correct bots can be programed to read this. However, very few people know how to do that.

[boondoggle]

You are wrong. Research it. Current CAPTCHA's are not readable.

Are you his relative.

cheers
Boon

[LazyRobot]

Hmm, are you sure (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mori/gimpy/gimpy.html)?

[boondoggle]

How about Here (http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/)

From the page...

[ QUOTE ]
the Passport/Yahoo and CFXCaptcha captchas are probably going to last for a long time

[/ QUOTE ]

cheers
Boon

[bpb]

[ QUOTE ]
You are wrong. Research it. Current CAPTCHA's are not readable.

Are you his relative.

cheers
Boon

[/ QUOTE ]

You should see a proctologist about that stick up your ass.

[ethan]

[ QUOTE ]
You are wrong. Research it. Current CAPTCHA's are not readable.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? None of them are readable? (http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/). Of course, some currently in use haven't been broken yet, but saying that makes them unreadable makes it obvious you have no idea what you're talking about.

I liked this approach to beating them (from Wikipedia's article on captchas):[ QUOTE ]
Some free e-mail providers have used captchas in account registration, to deter spammers from obtaining large numbers of accounts automatically. Spammers have found a way to circumvent this restriction: simply present the captcha to a human user under false pretenses, and use the human's response to obtain the e-mail account.

To do this, the spammer must control a Web site to which human users wish to gain access — for instance, a pornography site. When a user goes to the spammer's porn site, the server starts a new account registration at the free e-mail provider. It downloads the provider's captcha and presents it to the user as a captcha for access to the porn site. The user, not knowing that the captcha is recycled, provides the correct response — and the spammer's software can then complete the e-mail account registration.

[/ QUOTE ]

[boondoggle]

My point is that there are implementations of CAPTCHA's who cannot be defeated thus they would be fine for defeating bots. Therefore, the paranoid idiots came up empty on their flush draw.

Regardless, I don't play limit and that is where the bots are invading--not NL.

cheers
Boon

[rlr]

[ QUOTE ]
The class exuded by so many posters leaves a lot to be desired

[/ QUOTE ]

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
My point is that there are implementations of CAPTCHA's who cannot be defeated thus they would be fine for defeating bots. Therefore, the paranoid idiots came up empty on their flush draw.

Regardless, I don't play limit and that is where the bots are invading--not NL.

cheers
Boon

[/ QUOTE ]

Man you are a tool.

It's already been posted, but...

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mori/gimpy/gimpy.html

Please show me a CAPTCHA that can't be beat.

[boondoggle]

[ QUOTE ]


Man you are a tool.

It's already been posted, but...

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mori/gimpy/gimpy.html

Please show me a CAPTCHA that can't be beat.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are an idiot. I already posted a link where the authors of a CAPTCHA cracking project say there are some that will not be broken. Here is the Link (http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/). Now scroll down to halfway and you will see numerous CAPTCHA's that have not been broken and the authors state that the Yahoo and others will probably never be broken. Furthermore, the page you cite is simply one project attempting to break 1 or 2 EASY CAPTCHA's.

You are a moron. A similiar statement that you would espouse would be that since WEP encryption has been broken then routers are not safe regardless of the fact that there are newer encryptions available that have not been broken.

Learn to read.

cheers
Boon

[wacki]

Well I disagree with the author. Captcha's can be beat by various means. However I will reinforce that there are variations that VERY FEW know how to beat them. That is all I'm going to say about that.

Still even if they couldn't be beat what would prevent somebody from sitting in front of 30 screens while their bots did the work? Pretty much nothing.

[wacki]

BTW, since you are so emotional about this, how are your bots?

[Jax_Grinder]

Rather than using a static image for the test (i.e., the "gimpy" example), why don't they use a word-scramble or simple math problem to accomplish the same thing, but defeat the ability of a bot to break through by simply decifiring the image.

For example, instruct the user to count the number of lines in an image and then add some random decimal (created independently for each user).

Or, present a series of characters and issue randomly generated instructions on how to sequence the characters to create a word (kinda like random boggle).

I don't pretend to know much about this stuff, but it seems like there should be an elegant, yet simple, way to defeat the ability of a bot to "read" a security image.

[MortalWombat]

[ QUOTE ]
For example, instruct the user to count the number of lines in an image and then add some random decimal (created independently for each user).

[/ QUOTE ]But this would have the undesirable effect of weeding out the players who couldn't count or do simple arithmetic.

[Frequitude]

I haven't pressed it yet, but doesn't the system used in hotmail have an audio button? What does this button do? If it pronounces the words over the speakers, wouldn't a microphone and a simple audio-processing algorithm do the trick?

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]

For example, instruct the user to count the number of lines in an image and then add some random decimal (created independently for each user).

Or, present a series of characters and issue randomly generated instructions on how to sequence the characters to create a word (kinda like random boggle).

[/ QUOTE ]

A computer would be much better than humans at this.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't pressed it yet, but doesn't the system used in hotmail have an audio button? What does this button do? If it pronounces the words over the speakers, wouldn't a microphone and a simple audio-processing algorithm do the trick?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

http://www.research-lab.com/

Also I could sit infront of a computer and let the bots run on every poker room. My only job would be to beat the CAPTCHA's.

FYI: This is one subject I am very worried about btw. I really would like to know more about Party Poker's countermeasures. If I didn't play so much poker (I don't want to get banned) I would be running bots right now. Not to make money, but just out of curiousity of how many people playing online are actually humans. Also, I am curious if I could actually pull it off. Online games are much tighter than live games yet the games are still rather good so I can't get too much into a fuss. Still, I am still a bit worried as to how they are going to keep their poker rooms safe. Or if they even care. Action is action and rake will always be collected so I have trouble seeing party being too bothered by this. The bots will regulate themselves through natural selection.

[querulous]

The problem with allowing bots is that it raises the barrier to entry. If decent bots ever become a certain percentage of your opponents the only way to win will be to be ridiculously good or to build a better bot. Both of those are hard to do. People unable to do either will go elsewhere for their action. Eventually, someone will release an optimal bot that everyone will use and there'll be no point in playing, you'll have no advantage.