Do-it-yourself OCR with Perl modules
ONE IN A MILLION
SecurID tokens use an authentication system by RSA Security to give the user a valid key for logging onto the target system. A home-grown optical character recognition tool in Perl monitors the key generator.
My colleague Fergus recently noticed that his SecurID token displayed “000000,” and he posted a photo of this on Flickr. These keyfob tokens by SecurID output a different 6-digit number every 60 seconds. If the odds for any numeric sequence appearing are equal, the chance of getting to see “000000” is one in a million. It’s like winning the lottery! This lucky shot made me curious to find out what my keyfob displayed while I wasn’t looking. It is fairly easy to digitize the output with a webcam or a scanner, and optical character recognition (OCR) would give me the digits hidden in the pixel-based output. But because OCR vendors have more or less patented this area to death, there is little in the line of functional free software.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
News
-
KDE Plasma 5.22 Released with Better Stability and Usability Across the Board
The KDE Plasma desktop development has kicked into high gear and the latest release reflects newfound popularity and drive behind the open-source environment.
-
Nvidia and Valve Collaborate to Bring DLSS to Linux
Both powerhouses in the gaming industry are trying to make the experience on Linux much improved, by way of DLSS.
-
Kali Linux 2021.2 Official Release Now Available
The latest iteration of security fan-favorite Kali Linux has been released with new tools, themes, and plenty of improvements.
-
Entroware Unleashes a Beast of a Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a portable workhorse, look no further than the Entroware Proteus laptop.
-
System76 Unveils its “Launch” Keyboard
The open-source darling, System76, is about to launch the Launch keyboard and you can pre-order yours now.
-
Armbian 21.05 Now Available
The Armbian developers have released the latest update to the Debian-based Linux distribution geared for ARM and embedded devices.
-
StarLabs has Released Another Linux Laptop
A new 14" Linux laptop has been released by the company that created the 11" Star Lite and can be purchased with your choice of Linux distribution.
-
Ubuntu 21.04 Adds Support for Active Directory and Other Major Changes
In a bid to help make Linux more viable for the business desktop, Canonical adds support for Active Directory and a few other notable changes.
-
GNOME 40 Available on openSUSE
The rolling release edition of openSUSE, Tumbleweed, now offers the latest version of the GNOME desktop.
-
Apple M1 Hardware Support to be Merged into Linux Kernel 5.13
Linux users will be able to install their favorite distribution on Apple’s M1-based hardware.