Shamik Sural

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Shamik Sural is a leading researcher in cybersecurity, with a particular focus on the vulnerabilities of image-based CAPTCHAs—the ubiquitous security tests designed to distinguish human users from automated bots. His work critically examines the robustness of these visual challenges against sophisticated machine learning and image recognition techniques. In his highly influential 2012 study, "Attacking Image Based CAPTCHAs Using Image Recognition Techniques," Sural demonstrated that many widely deployed CAPTCHAs could be systematically defeated by automated image analysis, a finding that has garnered over 15 citations and reshaped how the security community evaluates visual authentication. He further explored this threat landscape in his 2013 paper, "Web Services Based Attacks against Image CAPTCHAs," highlighting how attackers could leverage distributed computing resources to compromise CAPTCHA systems at scale. By exposing these fundamental weaknesses, Sural’s research has driven the development of more resilient CAPTCHA designs and advanced the broader understanding of adversarial machine learning in cybersecurity. His contributions are essential reading for students and researchers working at the intersection of computer vision, security, and human-computer interaction.