Title: Synthetic Arabic handwritten CAPTCHA

Authors: Suliman A. Alsuhibany; Fatimah N. Almohaimeed; Naseem A. Alrobah

Addresses: Computer Science Department, College of Computer, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia ' Information Technology Department, College of Computer, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia ' Information Technology Department, College of Computer, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: Differentiating between humans and bots has become a critical issue of websites' security. Therefore, a completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart (CAPTCHA) is a test to limit the ability of cyber attackers trying to scale their activities using automated bots. Several Latin-based CAPTCHAs, which are widely used, have been broken, while Arabic script and handwritten text have inherent characteristics that have been proven to be beneficial for cybersecurity. Accordingly, we proposed a method for using Arabic handwritten text to generate infinite CAPTCHA challenges. In order to assess the proposed CAPTCHA generator, experimental studies were conducted. The results show a gap between machine and human recognition abilities while using Arabic handwritten script.

Keywords: Arabic script; handwriting synthesis; CAPTCHA; cyber security; web security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICS.2021.118959

International Journal of Information and Computer Security, 2021 Vol.16 No.3/4, pp.385 - 398

Received: 25 Mar 2019
Accepted: 19 Sep 2019
Published online: 15 Nov 2021 *

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