New approach to CAPTCHA - with ads!

Minteye, an Israeli start-up has come up with a new form of CAPTCHA - those annoying squiggly alphanumeric patterns that supposedly allow a web site to be sure that the user is human. What's more it has a business model attached to it. Minteye's variant is known as SLIDING CAPTCHA. The user adjusts a slider until a distorted image looks like something recognisable. The business angle is to include adverts in the human resolved image. Whether it is taken up will probably depend a lot on how well it can discriminate the human user but sometimes a good business model will trump security in the market. However, only last week it seems a short Python script was concocted to defeat it. But these things can never be perfect. And if a machine ever passes the Turing test how can CAPTCHAs hope to work?

10 Signs You’ve Been Working In Information Security Too Long

10 Signs You’ve Been Working In Information Security Too Long
e.g.
When your mum calls you ask her three security questions to verify her identity;
Your pet’s name consists of at least 20 characters, and contains a mix of numbers, uppercase letters, and at least one special character;
Sometimes you can’t understand your own thoughts because they are encrypted.

You get the idea!

12 Must-Watch Security Startups for 2013 from cio.com

12 Must-Watch Security Startups for 2013 - an interesting selection of mainly cloud-based security and security monitoring technologies. Some, although still in stealth mode, have already picked up significant investment.