3 ms·

I always assumed that when given the option to hear the CAPTCHA it was going to just read me the muddled words I see. Using just 58 different spoken words doesn

I always assumed that when given the option to hear the CAPTCHA it was going to just read me the muddled words I see. Using just 58 different spoken words doesn't seem anywhere near as secure as the text images... which I guess is why it was cracked.

bri3d 14y ago
The idea behind reCAPTCHA is that it occasionally throws in a word (or street sign, or occasional fragment of total garbage) that it doesn't know. Hence, not really possible to just text-to-speech the visual part of the captcha to generate an audio one, as often the visual captcha contains an unknown. However, if they're sampling radio programs to use as background noise, reCAPTCHA could become a learning tool for radio programs as well. A reliable algorithm for splitting a source stream into high-probability individual-word portions would need to be devised - then, just like the visual version, combine one known word and one unknown word, combine with the background distortion, and this brand of attack is essentially defeated. I suspect that spoken-word digitization is at least a potential future plan, although I also suspect the audio version of captchas are requested infrequently enough that learning new words might take a long time.
- ericabiz 14y ago
  > The idea behind reCAPTCHA is that it occasionally throws in a word (or street sign, or occasional fragment of total garbage) that it doesn't know. Yes, but you don't have to input those. Try it for yourself and see. (I never input them.) When you do input them, it helps Google digitize books, street numbers, etc.--sort of like a "Mechanical Turk"--but it's completely optional. So you could devise a text-to-speech algorithm, but only for the word Google's CAPTCHA actually knows. (It's probably in the works as we speak.)

3 ms·

I always assumed that when given the option to hear the CAPTCHA it was going to just read me the muddled words I see. Using just 58 different spoken words doesn

by jack-r-abbit 14y ago

bri3d 14y ago
The idea behind reCAPTCHA is that it occasionally throws in a word (or street sign, or occasional fragment of total garbage) that it doesn't know. Hence, not really possible to just text-to-speech the visual part of the captcha to generate an audio one, as often the visual captcha contains an unknown. However, if they're sampling radio programs to use as background noise, reCAPTCHA could become a learning tool for radio programs as well. A reliable algorithm for splitting a source stream into high-probability individual-word portions would need to be devised - then, just like the visual version, combine one known word and one unknown word, combine with the background distortion, and this brand of attack is essentially defeated. I suspect that spoken-word digitization is at least a potential future plan, although I also suspect the audio version of captchas are requested infrequently enough that learning new words might take a long time.
- ericabiz 14y ago
  > The idea behind reCAPTCHA is that it occasionally throws in a word (or street sign, or occasional fragment of total garbage) that it doesn't know. Yes, but you don't have to input those. Try it for yourself and see. (I never input them.) When you do input them, it helps Google digitize books, street numbers, etc.--sort of like a "Mechanical Turk"--but it's completely optional. So you could devise a text-to-speech algorithm, but only for the word Google's CAPTCHA actually knows. (It's probably in the works as we speak.)