Tensorflow Captcha Solver

Solve image based captchas using Tensorflow neural networks. This demo was developed for the DAHO.AM Conference in Munich, 2017.

This repository is unmaintained and the code might not work as expected. If you are looking for another Tensorflow-based solution, head over to: https://github.com/PatrickLib/captcha_recognize.

Getting started

Clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/stekhn/tensorflow-captcha-solver.git

This guide was written for Mac users, but users might still find it useful.

Set up Python virtualenv

Create a new virtual environment:

$ virtualenv venv

Activate the virtual environment:

$ source venv/bin/activate

Check if the Python virtual environment is set up correctly:

$ which python
/Users/your-username/Development/venv/env/bin/python

Install dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Troubleshooting: Tensorflow could not be found:

Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement tensorflow==1.1.0 (from -r requirements.txt (line 51)) (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for tensorflow==1.1.0 (from -r requirements.txt (line 51))

If you encounter this error, try installing Tensorflow from the binary:

$ python -m pip install --upgrade https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/mac/cpu/tensorflow-1.1.0-py2-none-any.whl

Linux or Windows users need to find another download link...

Generate captchas

Go to captchas folder:

$ cd captchas

Download SimpleCaptcha to the folder:

$ curl -O https://vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net/project/simplecaptcha/simplecaptcha-1.2-jdk1.5.jar

Extract SimpleCaptcha:

$ jar xf simplecaptcha-1.2-jdk1.5.jar

Run SimpleCaptcha:

$ javac Main.java && java Main

Train the neural network

Once you've generated the test data, go to the solver folder:

$ cd solver

Create the tensorflow records:

$ python captcha_records.py 

Train the network (Note, that the training runs until you stop it):

$ python captcha_train.py 

Evaluate the performance of the network:

$ python captcha_eval.py

Try to solve some captchas:

$ python captcha_predict.py

Everything working? Great! Go solve some captchas (on your own machine for developing purposes, 'f course).

Further info

If you want to see how a neural network is working, check out Tenserflow Graph Viz.