Are you a human? It’s a question humanity seems to have been asking itself since our inception – after all, who hasn’t had a few moments of wondering if they might actually be a robot? With the rise of AI and machine learning, chances are more than a few of us have had the thought. But it turns out the answer to this question has serious implications for cybersecurity.
Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the sophistication of bots used by hackers. AI and ML-powered bots have become so good at bypassing traditional CAPTCHAs that tech companies are now looking for alternative solutions to keep these malicious programs from breaching our systems.
That’s all thanks to the humble CAPTCHA. Also known as a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, this was a method of authentication developed in the late 1990s by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and cybersecurity company Sanctum. It was created to help thwart would-be hackers who were using leetspeak to fool moderation programs. CAPTCHAs usually consist of a short line of slightly distorted text and/or numbers, something that can be read easily by humans but not by machines.
But as machine learning algorithms have improved, traditional CAPTCHAs have become less effective. Bot operators are now able to use cheap (or free) “solvers” that can pass these tests even if they’ve been beefed up. In a feat of reverse-acronym acrobatics, Google pitted an algorithm against one of its most difficult CAPTCHAs and the bot passed with flying colors – whereas only 33% of humans were able to do the same!
But CAPTCHAs are still worth using for many applications – as long as they’re not too difficult for humans, since people may give up before even trying if the test is too hard. AI and ML-powered bots are also now being applied to CAPTCHAs to make them more difficult for malicious programs to crack.
More secure alternatives to traditional CAPTCHA are being developed as well. Technologies like retina scanning and fingerprint verification can offer a more secure way to authenticate people’s identities and may soon become commonplace. Cybersecurity company Cloudflare has even announced a CAPTCHA alternative called Turnstile, which relies on verifying human browser behavior in a matter of seconds – and potentially saving us hours of work in the long run.
It’s exciting to see the many ways technology is fighting back against malicious bots and hackers – but as our cybersecurity systems evolve, so too do their methods. Stay ahead of the game and learn something new every day – and you’ll be sure to stay one step ahead of the bots!
