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‘Find the Ghost’, Captcha are new features adapted by Snapchat against spambots

by Fahad Saleem

snapchat verifications screenSnapchat introduced an innovative security measure of asking the users to prove that they are not snapbots, following the increased cases of snap spamming and leaked usernames. As you sign into Snapchat, the webpage of the company asks you to recognize the ghost image. If you pick the correct ghost photos, you will be able to sign in. However, the robotic approach will not be successful any more now.

 The new security measures will alleviate the increased attacks of spamming on Snapchat. It will stop the hackers from any malicious acts. The machines will not be able to foil the characters or images for logging into Snapchat.

The major innovation in Snapchat is to reduce the user requests by introducing the recognition feature in its API. The test of Snapchat comprises a SNAPTCHA that is not easy to decode by some machine. The robots will not be able to recognize the characters of the image easily. Until now, the Snapchat allowed the users to login by typing just username, email address, and password for signing up for the first time.

The innovation is still not enough to secure the company against the spamming. Steven Hickson, a Developer, showed that the new security system could be easily bypassed for logging into the Snapchat by using the image processing techniques. The machine can easily capture the ghost and compare with already stored images in the database. It was easy enough to bypass the security. The developer argued that the new security system is highly bogus since it is quite easy to recognize the characters by machines. The techniques for recognizing the humans must be more radical.

The feedback from the users reveals that the ghosts are not difficult to recognize. They can be easily decoded by machines. Even the CAPTCHA is not as stressful to recognize by machines as the company would’ve thought.

To address the issues with the security, Snapchat will have to further modify their APIs to stop the malicious acts from hackers around the globe. They will have to devise some method that is beyond the reach of spamming software and machines. The engineers of the company will have to think of new strategies to deceive the intelligent machines. They will have to put the ball out of the court of simple image processing.

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