Cloudflare says it’s time to end CAPTCHA ‘madness’, launches new security key-based replacement

 


Cloudflare, which you may know as a provider of DNS services or the company telling you why the website you clicked on won’t load, wants to replace the “madness” of CAPTCHAs across the web with an entirely new system.

CAPTCHAs are those tests you have to take, often when trying to log into a service, that ask you to click images of things like busses or crosswalks or bicycles to prove that you’re a human. (CAPTCHA, if you didn’t know, stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”) The problem is, they add a lot of friction to using the web and can sometimes be difficult to solve — I’m sure I’m not the only person who has frustratingly failed a CAPTCHA because I didn’t see that corner of a crosswalk in one image.


In a blog, Cloudflare says it aims to “get rid of CAPTCHAs completely” by replacing them with a new way to prove you are a human by touching or looking at a device using a system it calls “Cryptographic Attestation of Personhood.” Right now, it only supports a limited number of USB security keys like YubiKeys, but you can test Cloudflare’s system for yourself right now on the company’s website.


I tried it out, and it worked great. All I had to do was click the prominent “I am human (beta)” button on the site, then follow a few prompts to select my security key, then tap it, and then allow the site to access the make and model of the key. When I did, the system waved me through (though it just took me back to the blog).

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