For my independent study, I investigated optical character recognition techniques and their application to recognizing text-based HIPs (methods used to distinguish human users and machines on the internet). This study is an extension of methods covered in neural networks and machine learning, computer vision, and artificial intelligence. The report includes experimental results of breaking the ASP Security Image Generator (CAPTCHA) v2.0 with a 72% success rate. Posting of source code is not currently planned. However, my paper contains fairly detailed steps and can be downloaded here.