If it were up to Cloudflare, we humans shouldn’t have to prove we aren’t robots by passing CAPTCHA tests. The web security company suggests a new method that utilizes USB security keys instead of requiring us to identity boats, bikes, and traffic lights in grainy photos.

Known as Cryptographic Attestation of Personhood, this human verification technique allows websites to distinguish human users from bots within a few seconds and let the former through while blocking the latter, whereas Cloudflare claims users on average need 32 seconds to finish a CAPTCHA test.

Cloudflare-CAPTCHA-alternative

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Using Cloudflare’s tool is simple. To verify the user as human, a typical website would, say, display a button for the user to click. The user is then prompted to plug in his USB security key (or tap wirelessly via NFC), and the cryptographic attestation is sent to the website. No problem solving needed.

You can read more about this attestation tool via Cloudflare’s blog.

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  1. Pretty bad, now instead of just solving a few small problems now we have to buy something and plug-in something we may have or not have at the time.

  2. Ok. So I just need to buy a security key and authenticate my identity with Cloudflare all the time so they can collect more data on me. Seriously, most of their products either explicitly or implicitly collect data on users. I’m sure it’s all for the public good. And, I just want to thank cloudflare for already making the web great. We’ve all seen their error pages, javascript browser authentication *cough fingerprinting* and geoblocks at affordable prices.