Researchers use AI to trick the CAPTCHA Authentication

The CAPTCHA which was developed to prevent bots from accessing websites will now be easily cracked using an innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) system. The CAPTCHA requires users to type a text in the textbox- a task which is too easy for humans but impossible for robots.

Researchers at Vicarious - a California-based artificial intelligence firm have come up with a modified neural network that could crack CAPTCHA after studying just a few examples. The system is called recursive cortical network, as reported by TechXplore.

In a traditional neural network, nodes are created to hold new information—a network is built from the nodes and it is used to judge how to deal with new data. This is how it learns. The team at Vicarious AI used a neural network, too, but they added something new—recursion. Recursion is a software technique whereby data is used to learn something new. As that new process is learned, the results go back into the software, as well. This process is used over and over until a solution is reached. It is a technique that has long been used to solve mazes.

By applying this technique to a neural network, the researchers found out that they were able to reduce the learning curve of the software dramatically. The system just needed five steps, for example, to crack Google's reCAPTCHA 67 percent of the time.