The Game is On

This week a group of hackers were able to break Google's Captcha security measure, and back in January they cracked Yahoo's.

For those of you who don't know what Captcha is, it's those impossible to read, fuzzy, jumbled letters and numbers that you have to enter as extra security. The significance of this? Now spammers can automatically sign up for email accounts to spam you with.

CAPTCHA is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It was developed to do just that, distinguish between computers and humans based on the fact that we as humans have enough intelligence to figure out what those letters and numbers in the image are, and repeat them.

So my first reaction? Great, more spam. But after thinking about it, I believe this battle between network security and hackers will eventually spawn AI (Artificial Intelligence). As security relies more and more on logic and human intelligence to distinguish between bots and humans, hackers will continue to increase their bots' ability to mimic human intelligence. This 'One-Upping' will eventually lead to the spawning of computer AI and the end of the world! Ok, so maybe the apocalypse is a bit much (I've watched too many Terminator movies). But with greed as the primary motivation, I think hackers are capable of quite a bit.

Machines on the Rise

"USA TODAY REPORTS that on an average day, 40 per cent of the 800 million computers connected to the Internet are bots used to send out spam, viruses and to mine for sensitive personal data."

Can you hear that? That's an infant crying, his name is Skynet.

Thanks to The Inquirer.

Mutant Robotic Deer-Puppy!

In the latest Skynet update, this robotic dog's (which looks more like a deer to me) maneuverability is pretty amazing. And it's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which makes it even more likely that it will spawn AI, become evil, and kill us all.



Thanks to Steatopygous Mathophile for the link.

Israeli Residents Demand Laser Defense

I'm always on the lookout for new projects being developed that are laying the foundation for the inevitable takeover by Skynet. This story caught my eye today, Israeli Residents are suing their government because they aren't providing enough protection from Palestinian rocket fire. The residents are demanding the government buy SkyGuard, a high energy chemical laser missile defense system developed by Northrup Grumman.

Speaking on behalf of "The Machines", I hope they get it, quickly.