Security News > 2021 > May > Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs

Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs
2021-05-14 03:29

Cloudflare research engineer Thibault Meunier assumed that the average internet user sees a CAPTCHA once ever ten days and multiplied that by world's 4.6 billion internet users and Cloudflare's 32-second CAPTCHA-completion estimate to assert that humanity collectively spends 500 years every day completing CAPTCHAs.

Cloudflare will initially support three - YubiKeys, HyperFIDO keys; and Thetis FIDO U2F. "Completing this flow takes five seconds," Meunier asserts in a post on Cloudflare's blog.

Cloudflare will offer Cryptographic Attestation of Personhood on a limited basis in English-speaking regions to test the feasibility of its idea.

Meunier's post nods to the fact that some smartphones can now perform the same function as a security key but stops short of suggesting that Cloudflare will use them.

The Register fancies that could be a sticking point for Cloudflare's ideas, as physical security keys don't come cheap - we've struggled to find any under US$20 - and most are USB-A devices at a time when such ports are becoming less prevalent.

Does Cloudflare really think dongles are less painful than CAPTCHAS? Let us know in the Poll below.


News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/05/14/cloudflare_cryptographic_attestation_of_personhood_captcha_killer/

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