Google testing controversial webcam-based reCAPTCHA that asks for a hand scan to prove you’re human — testers beat it with a stock photo

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The check sits inside Google Cloud Fraud Defense, the platform behind reCAPTCHA on login screens, sign-up forms, and checkout pages. It’s meant to catch what the older challenges increasingly miss, such as automated account creation and credential stuffing.

When the challenge triggers, the browser requests camera permission and prompts the user through a short gesture. Google’s machine-learning model records a brief video and extracts hand-landmark data covering 21 finger and knuckle points, using the same landmark scheme that powers its MediaPipe hand-tracking tools.

Following its launch, it didn’t take long for the Internet to get around the new method. Using nothing but a stock image of a person waving into an OBS Virtual Camera, testers pointed reCAPTCHA at that virtual feed and cleared the challenge after a few adjustments to the image position. Because the whole sequence can be driven by a short script, gesture reCAPTCHA in its current state appears to do nothing but add friction for ordinary users while offering little resistance to an attacker.

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