CloudFlare wants to change captchas (again)

In which photo is the bicycle? Find Hydrants! Place these items in the right direction without the tail or head. If you experience deep existential panic while reading these sentences, you have already taken a captcha challenge-response test to prove that you are not a robot. After trying to impose its own captcha system, digital infrastructure company CloudFlare Ambition To make them obsolete.

Caps, these “Fully automated public touring experiments to differentiate between machines and humans”, Has never been a problem. Google claims to have abandoned the visual approach in favor of the third-generation Recapsa system in terms of observing user behavior, but object authentication tests are common.

The ReCaptcha system converts website visitors into micro tags that feed Google’s algorithm into the machine. First-generation powered optical character recognition systems support the second cars’ subject recognition systems, which are certainly not autonomous. “About 500 human years are wasted every day” With these systems, CloudFlare says.

To think that she was trying to impose her own method! But still hCaptcha, Which is nothing more than a labeling method for the intended data Mechanical learning, Turned out to be a failure. The American company, especially known for its massive content distribution network, is turning a blind eye. If it were not his captcha system, it would not be any captcha system, but a CAP system.

CAP? Cryptographic certification of personality, I.e. “Cryptographic Certificate of Person Quality” In the language of Cleo. “A real person can touch or see their device to prove they are human”, CloudFlare illustrates, “Without revealing his identity”. It is a question of proving his quality as a human being without revealing his personal identity.

This system is currently based on the use of the security key Ubiquitous key. The CloudFlare demo page Showing system interest:

• The page requires an encryption certificate;
• To respond the user clicks the “I am man” button;
• If the security key is already inserted he must touch it to get his sesame.

If you have a security key, the process takes a click and two seconds, and no specific configuration is required. CloudFlare does not care about the exact core shape, and even if it is set correctly until it comes from a trusted manufacturer. Inserting a security key and touching it to activate it is enough to prove that a person is in front of the screen.

“Certificate not connected to user’s device”, CloudFlare explains. The main hurdle, however, is a key, but the company plans to support other authentication methods that are compatible with the WebAthon protocol, which prevents biometric data collection. The Mac’s Touch ID sensor and the iPhone’s Face ID sensor could thus serve as a key text.

Without the support of device manufacturers, especially Apple and Google, this new protocol would be beyond testing. Even if it is accepted, it will not block the operations of click farms. But if this can reduce the hassle associated with captchas coming back with more and more ridiculous questions …