Using Deep Learning to Solve Google reCAPTCHA v2’s Image Challenges

The most popular CAPTCHA service in use today is Google reCAPTCHA v2, whose main offering is an image-based CAPTCHA challenge. This paper looks into the security measures used in reCAPTCHA v2's image challenges and proposes a deep learning-based solution that can be used to automatically solve them. The proposed method is tested with both a custom object- detection deep learning model as well as Google's own Cloud Vision API, in conjunction with human mimicking mouse movements to bypass the challenges. The paper also suggests some potential defense measures to increase overall security and other additional attack directions for reCAPTCHA v2.