musings about captcha images

[DrAlimentado]

has anyone noticed that the captcha image for recruiting has changed recently? It has become more scratchy, the reason turns out to be (via the KoC forums 'top ranks discussion' thread) that someone had written a genuine working auto-clicker!

so... it can be done! interesting that adding scratchiness stops it working though. I am guessing it was a db approach, I mean if you think about it there is likely to be a finite amount of character images arranged using a fixed rule. It's not impossible that it was using a more intelligent approach to crack it but I think it more unlikely.

hmmm, if only I had a bunch of time and some inspiration [satan]

its also worth pointing out that the captcha images for buying/training/spying etc are much easier than the ones for recruiting... I'm just saying if we could do that we really could have a utility that basically played the game for you ;)

[ProPain]

Well, by far not an expert on char recognition but I had a lecture once at dutch postal services who invented a machine to read handwriting. That all worked with unique dot patterns per letter/digit. I think they used 2 horizontal cross lines and one vertical. I'll try and look into it.

[DrAlimentado]

cheers PP :)

funnily eonugh my father did a Masters thesis on character recognition but it was about 15 years ago now. his approach was using neural net stuff [crazyeyes] but I get the feeling that modern solutions are a bit more practical. I mean a tablet PC comes with handwriting recognition as part of windows and we know ms aren't using anything too fancy to do this...

so yeah, any insights into character recognition is food for thought. (realistically I think there is about a 1% chance I will have the time/energy to do it, but you never know...)

[romeothemonk]

I was thinking that you could use a image capture device, i.e. webcam. Capture Images for 2-3 days worth of clicking.
Then comes the fun part of building and programming a neural net. I don't have any experience with them but I shared an office with a guy that does build and program them. It is probably a simple net, as there can just be a smudge sorter (char counter), than look for repeats. The hard part would be teaching the net.
For the 15 mins it would save per day, I will just hand click and not overtly cheat.