Deep Learning Based CAPTCHA Recognition Network with Grouping Strategy

Sensors (Basel). 2023 Nov 29;23(23):9487. doi: 10.3390/s23239487.

Abstract

Websites can improve their security and protect against harmful Internet attacks by incorporating CAPTCHA verification, which assists in distinguishing between human users and robots. Among the various types of CAPTCHA, the most prevalent variant involves text-based challenges that are intentionally designed to be easily understandable by humans while presenting a difficulty for machines or robots in recognizing them. Nevertheless, due to significant advancements in deep learning, constructing convolutional neural network (CNN)-based models that possess the capability of effectively recognizing text-based CAPTCHAs has become considerably simpler. In this regard, we present a CAPTCHA recognition method that entails creating multiple duplicates of the original CAPTCHA images and generating separate binary images that encode the exact locations of each group of CAPTCHA characters. These replicated images are subsequently fed into a well-trained CNN, one after another, for obtaining the final output characters. The model possesses a straightforward architecture with a relatively small storage in system, eliminating the need for CAPTCHA segmentation into individual characters. Following the training and testing of the suggested CNN model for CAPTCHA recognition, the experimental results demonstrate the model's effectiveness in accurately recognizing CAPTCHA characters.

Keywords: computer vision; convolutional neural network; deep learning; image segmentation; text classification; text-based CAPTCHA recognition.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.