How Would You Detect Bots?

[Alphanos]

mm, what if you apply that video streaming idea only to random events. In effect this would turn random events into turing tests (captcha). It would not be mind numbing for players to perform, could be made harder than a bunch of garbled text and at the same time easier for players.

The servers would also not be required to run a fell fledged runescape client, only what is necessary for the random events.

 

This sounds like a brilliant idea! You remove the main detriments of the concept of remote video viewing, but get the core benefits such as removing details of the random events from the Runescape client code. If Jagex had a full set of 10-20 random events using this method, preferably new and as yet unsolved, it would be extraordinarily challenging for bot-writers to recover. Most likely they would be stuck confined to no-random areas, and other changes could eliminate even that safe haven for them. This would take a lot of engine work on Jagex's part, but I think it has the potential to permanently strike the death knell for bots.

 

Everyone, please try to find flaws in the above idea. I think this is the most promising idea suggested so far on this thread.

[ilovecuttingyews]

mm, what if you apply that video streaming idea only to random events. In effect this would turn random events into turing tests (captcha). It would not be mind numbing for players to perform, could be made harder than a bunch of garbled text and at the same time easier for players.

The servers would also not be required to run a fell fledged runescape client, only what is necessary for the random events.

I don't know how pheasable switching from a live to streaming then back to live system would work, but hey...I know nothing about programming. But that would work pretty well for at least making randoms do what they were created to do, stop bots. If you had to check back in with your bot every ~150k exp (or whatever the exp trigger is for randoms after you've reached the 'max' time between them) I'm sure it would stop a fair number of people from botting. Not to mention, new acc's get randoms way more often then 150k exp so the newer 'throw away' accounts would get stuck far more. I'm willing to take a slight lag durring my randoms in order to 'stop' bots from being able to function.

 

With a system like this, bot programers would probably build some sort of auto log out into bots when it hits a random. All Jagex has to do is make a person logging out in a random flag the account for checking by thier secret bot finding software. IMO their software for identifying bots is actually pretty good atm but it requires players to flag accounts for checking (by reporting) which is why most bots survive.

[XCRunner772]

Want to know how to find bots and easily catch them?

 

Invisible Items/Monsters that only bots would see.

 

 

RS runs on Java. Everything is coded with an ID #. Bots work by detecting ID's. Heres the solution:

 

Make a new era of random events where items appear around the person in question that are coded the same as whatever theyre doing but ARENT ACTUALLY THERE.

 

Aka, if the person in question is fighting... green dragons. have 4-5 invisible green dragons with the SAME id's as the regular green dragons appear all around the person, but theyd be unclickable (theyre ghosts basically, you wouldnt be able to see them but a bot would because its gathering java data) Therefore, the person in question would react to this in two different ways:

 

Regular person:

-wouldnt even see the "invisible" things and they continue on their way.

 

Bots:

-Would consider this "invisible" thing to be real and would constantly attempt to click/attack/whatever to it. Therefore proving its a bot.

 

 

 

So yeah, my dad does coding and crap for a living, and he made me take classes on it when I was in Jr High convinced that, "this will help me in the real world". Wasted most of my time that Summer but at least I can do Sites and stuff :) I dont know enough Java though to really get involved in giving better ideas, but thats one Ive always thought was a clever one.

 

 

 

-C14

 

This might seem like it would work, but to make the items invisible, they would have a different item ID then a normal item.

[glasscube]

Want to know how to find bots and easily catch them?

 

Invisible Items/Monsters that only bots would see.

 

 

RS runs on Java. Everything is coded with an ID #. Bots work by detecting ID's. Heres the solution:

 

Make a new era of random events where items appear around the person in question that are coded the same as whatever theyre doing but ARENT ACTUALLY THERE.

 

Aka, if the person in question is fighting... green dragons. have 4-5 invisible green dragons with the SAME id's as the regular green dragons appear all around the person, but theyd be unclickable (theyre ghosts basically, you wouldnt be able to see them but a bot would because its gathering java data) Therefore, the person in question would react to this in two different ways:

 

Regular person:

-wouldnt even see the "invisible" things and they continue on their way.

 

Bots:

-Would consider this "invisible" thing to be real and would constantly attempt to click/attack/whatever to it. Therefore proving its a bot.

 

 

 

So yeah, my dad does coding and crap for a living, and he made me take classes on it when I was in Jr High convinced that, "this will help me in the real world". Wasted most of my time that Summer but at least I can do Sites and stuff :) I dont know enough Java though to really get involved in giving better ideas, but thats one Ive always thought was a clever one.

 

 

 

-C14

 

Jagex already does this.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Hmm.

 

Admittedly streaming some sort of content in the form of a tutorial or something may hold some merit, but you've got to consider 56Kers (yes they still exist and yes Jagex still supports them) and those that have bandwidth caps in their country. I don't like the idea of streaming content to a user, for those reasons - if you have to "bite the bullet" and reduce how many people you can theoretically target with your product to barely save grace, then something's seriously wrong.

 

I must reiterate myself here; I'm not convinced that any underlying software change would solve the problem of bots, but a major shift in gameplay - making the grind less rewarding or desirable as to actually playing for fun - has a chance, albeit slim. The whole reason that botting can be done is because it is a repeatable event. While you're not able to totally remove repeatable elements of games, you can certainly make them less desirable than events that take more effort and complexity overall.

 

It's not an easy solution, of course. None of this is. Nothing's a silver bullet here folks.

[Jonanananas]

What I've personally always wondered is:

 

You say bot programmers can get every information out of the RS client. If that's the case, why continue to supply it? I definitely don't want to piss off people who use it, but is it really necessary? What's the big deal about playing in a normal browser?

[Guy]

What I've personally always wondered is:

 

You say bot programmers can get every information out of the RS client. If that's the case, why continue to supply it? I definitely don't want to piss off people who use it, but is it really necessary? What's the big deal about playing in a normal browser?

On some slower computers, and computers which have trouble running Java, it is a very useful tool. I personally used it for that exact reason. There's also something about having a separate window rather than running it in your internet browser which is good.

 

OT: So, bots click randomly on an area with a specific item ID (I assume, from my somewhat limited knowledge). I would assume that it is within a certain timeframe that they click an object. Example, when an ore is mined, I guess there would be a specific interval between the bot clicking on the next ore. Depending on how the bot is coded, this would be always below a set time, and probably above a set time. Over the course of say, a month (perhaps less), the delay could be monitored and looked at to see trends. Then again, this could be largely impractical and could take up a fair amount of data.

 

There always is the old trick of looking at gameplay time statistics, to see how long a character is playing per day. If there is consistant gameplay per day of, say over 20hours, then this could be flagged up for human review.

 

The core issue with catching the bots is manpower.. there are simply so many bots and there will never be enough people to monitor them all physically. I'll have a bit of a think, and perhaps edit this later, but all of these solutions have to be 99.9% automated and accurate, which is the hard bit >.> (stating the obvious somewhat, I know).

 

 

EDIT: Seeing as I assume they work with item codes, surely there is a way for jagex to differentiate between whether things are being chosen by GUI or by item ID..? Seems feasable

[Thus]

What's the big deal about playing in a normal browser?

 

Some people are so computer illiterate that they do not realize the client is basically a bare version of IE. That or they have some browser settings that make it harder to play without changing them. Either way, I use Firefox.

[JoWie]

What I've personally always wondered is:

 

You say bot programmers can get every information out of the RS client. If that's the case, why continue to supply it? I definitely don't want to piss off people who use it, but is it really necessary? What's the big deal about playing in a normal browser?

 

There are 2 types of "clients" in this context:

 

There is the "Windows Launcher" from http://www.runescape.com/kbase/guid/Downloads_and_Wallpapers. This is just a program that contains java (openjdk) and launches the runescape applet using internet explorer. Older versions of this launcher were nothing more than a different Graphical User Interface on top of internet explorer. The bonus of the newer version is that java does not have to be installed and users are not confused if the game will not launch because of an old java version.

While naming the above "client", is technically valid, I would name it "launcher" to avoid confusion.

 

And there is the actual runescape client program, the java code itself. It does not matter if you are using firefox, chrome, the launcher, etc, the same code is executed. This is what I ment by "client"

[dynastyfan0]

I didn't read all 8 pages, so forgive me if this has been brought up.

 

One of the reasons botting is so common is because the risk is so low. You buy a bot for a few dollars and a membership for a few dollars. If the bot gets banned, boowho you just lost 6 dollars. I bet if people had a lot more to lose it would curtail the problem.

 

How about requiring a security deposite to get members? 50 bucks or something that you get back at any time you want so long as you are dropping your membership. If you get banned, you lose your security deposit. See how many ppl want to risk hundreds of dollars making 5 wc bots after that?

 

Credit card thefts/ less people wanting to be members.

 

Also what about unfair banning? (which Jagex does fairly often). Terrible idea

You got to realize that most people that bot are just kids and stuff. There is a huge difference between cheating on a game and committing a grand theft. Sure some people would pay with stolen credit cards, but the vast majority of botters wouldn't. terrible criticism.

[Stev]

I didn't read all 8 pages, so forgive me if this has been brought up.

 

One of the reasons botting is so common is because the risk is so low. You buy a bot for a few dollars and a membership for a few dollars. If the bot gets banned, boowho you just lost 6 dollars. I bet if people had a lot more to lose it would curtail the problem.

 

How about requiring a security deposite to get members? 50 bucks or something that you get back at any time you want so long as you are dropping your membership. If you get banned, you lose your security deposit. See how many ppl want to risk hundreds of dollars making 5 wc bots after that?

 

Credit card thefts/ less people wanting to be members.

 

Also what about unfair banning? (which Jagex does fairly often). Terrible idea

You got to realize that most people that bot are just kids and stuff. There is a huge difference between cheating on a game and committing a grand theft. Sure some people would pay with stolen credit cards, but the vast majority of botters wouldn't. terrible criticism.

Well, the RWT companies used it's customer's credit information to purchase memberships for it's bots. Why wouldn't it go that one step further and use it to pay for the $50 deposit?

[Sephy_]

Well apparently JaGex has just been keeping low profile and they actually had an efficient bot detection system. Now they have started a massive ban-campaing and apparently already 30 000 bots have been permanently banned.

QFC: 234-235-799-62616315

[Vex]

Got trolled

 

Not even mad

[Blyaunte]

Well apparently JaGex has just been keeping low profile and they actually had an efficient bot detection system. Now they have started a massive ban-campaing and apparently already 30 000 bots have been permanently banned.

QFC: 234-235-799-62616315

 

April Fools Day ... :wall:

[JoWie]

Hmm.

 

Admittedly streaming some sort of content in the form of a tutorial or something may hold some merit, but you've got to consider 56Kers (yes they still exist and yes Jagex still supports them) and those that have bandwidth caps in their country. I don't like the idea of streaming content to a user, for those reasons - if you have to "bite the bullet" and reduce how many people you can theoretically target with your product to barely save grace, then something's seriously wrong.

 

The video stream is something that could be dynamically decreased or increased in quality and frame rate depending on the connection speed. Just wait for sending the next video frame until the last video frame has been fully received. If the frame rate is gets too low, apply more compression. If I knew more about video compression and streaming I would throw up a few tests, but I have no idea what parameters to set so that the test is meaningful. I did notice that you can get away with more compression in runescape than you could for real life imagery.

 

Judging by some of the posts I see on this forum and the official forum I would say something is already seriously wrong. I have not seen any bots myself because I have just been dungeoneering (I last played over 5 years ago).

Jagex has to ask themselves, at what point will the bots get so much out of hand that their sustainability will suffer. If the only viable solution (I am not saying it is) is to make the game unpleasant for users with incredibly low bandwith, they may have no choice.

[Naraku893]

Well apparently JaGex has just been keeping low profile and they actually had an efficient bot detection system. Now they have started a massive ban-campaing and apparently already 30 000 bots have been permanently banned.

QFC: 234-235-799-62616315

 

i lolled

[Rohanlord]

Here's a thought, why not create a bot to stop botters? Can't you sit down in Auburys shop and stop the botters from getting to the rune essence? Though I don't wanna pay an extra membership on another account to do that.

[n64jive]

Here's a thought, why not create a bot to stop botters? Can't you sit down in Auburys shop and stop the botters from getting to the rune essence? Though I don't wanna pay an extra membership on another account to do that.

 

Once a method for stopping bots is discovered, it's only a few lines of code that scripters/programmers need to add to their bots in order to fix them. For instance, people used to lure Range guild bots. The bots now eat, tele, or run when in combat. You can no longer stop these bots.

 

Marker plants cover up Aubury, however he still exist in the menu. Bots that access the information via the client can still find him via the menu.

 

As you can see, once a method for stopping bots is released, it is fixed within a week, usually within a day.

[JoWie]

Here is a random event to illustrate some of the previous ideas:

 

You get teleported away by a guard which instructs you to identify a pickpocketer using a magic orb (like a security camera).

You are shown the pickpocketer from a front and side angle (randomized appearance).

When you look through the orb you will see a random location in a town of runescape from a high angle viewpoint (a precompiled list of possible locations will have to be made, this list is only known to the server). Here you will see a bunch of NPC's facing random directions at random locations, one of them is the pickpocketer.

The orb will show the location as a image generated by the server of a fixed size (probably a interlaced jpeg).

The viewpoint has to be rotated and zoomed, the pickpocketer could initially be off-screen. When completely zoomed out, the camera can be rotated (the amount of rotation per button click is slightly randomized), otherwise a reset button has to be pressed.

Clicking anywhere on the image will center on that location and zoom a step (new image is sent). When the maximum zoom is reached, a button can be pressed to confirm that you have identified the pickpocketer. When completely zoomed out, every X seconds the pickpocketer (and other npc's) will move and you will receive a new image.

For added difficulty, random weather effects such as rain, leaves, snow, shadows could be added.

 

When completely zoomed in, the pickpocketer is on screen and you press the confirm button you complete the random event.

 

 

A random event such as this will be very hard to solve for computer programs.

The only information presented are images.

You will have to explore around to get the correct one.

When an image is received, you only have one chance, clicking on the image will give you a new one based on your decision.

Because the NPC's move when fully zoom out, any old images will be useless.

Spending a lot of time computing is not possible because the ncp's keep moving every X seconds (when fully zoomed out)

 

This will not be impossible to solve (a turing test that is 100% accurate is impossible in theory). But it will be significantly harder than current events, I think it will take quite a while for bots to solve this.

It would probably take long enough that by the time it is solved with a low margin of error, multiple similar event would have been added. Creating such events is much easier then solving them.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

...Judging by some of the posts I see on this forum and the official forum I would say something is already seriously wrong. I have not seen any bots myself because I have just been dungeoneering (I last played over 5 years ago).

Jagex has to ask themselves, at what point will the bots get so much out of hand that their sustainability will suffer. If the only viable solution (I am not saying it is) is to make the game unpleasant for users with incredibly low bandwith, they may have no choice.

 

Yet at what point should one make the game inconvenient for users unable to afford either hardware, bandwidth, or both? There are still parts in the United States that only have access to either 56K or satellite (and some parts in the UK also don't have access to general internet, or it's very slow/metered), and cutting them out of the loop would be seen as unfair.

 

Assume that at least one person in those rural areas is a paying member. Is it suddenly fair to cut them off from a resource they were [previously] paying for, all in the name of fixing a problem in an inconvenient way? Then what of the metered bandwidth issue? Compression may reduce the amount of video transferred in any one instance, but this doesn't take into account multiple players in one household, or the number of instances this would have to be displayed for it to be viable.

 

Here is a random event to illustrate some of the previous ideas:

 

You get teleported away by a guard which instructs you to identify a pickpocketer using a magic orb (like a security camera).

You are shown the pickpocketer from a front and side angle (randomized appearance).

When you look through the orb you will see a random location in a town of runescape from a high angle viewpoint (a precompiled list of possible locations will have to be made, this list is only known to the server). Here you will see a bunch of NPC's facing random directions at random locations, one of them is the pickpocketer.

The orb will show the location as a image generated by the server of a fixed size (probably a interlaced jpeg).

The viewpoint has to be rotated and zoomed, the pickpocketer could initially be off-screen. When completely zoomed out, the camera can be rotated (the amount of rotation per button click is slightly randomized), otherwise a reset button has to be pressed.

Clicking anywhere on the image will center on that location and zoom a step (new image is sent). When the maximum zoom is reached, a button can be pressed to confirm that you have identified the pickpocketer. When completely zoomed out, every X seconds the pickpocketer (and other npc's) will move and you will receive a new image.

For added difficulty, random weather effects such as rain, leaves, snow, shadows could be added.

 

When completely zoomed in, the pickpocketer is on screen and you press the confirm button you complete the random event.

 

 

A random event such as this will be very hard to solve for computer programs.

The only information presented are images.

You will have to explore around to get the correct one.

When an image is received, you only have one chance, clicking on the image will give you a new one based on your decision.

Because the NPC's move when fully zoom out, any old images will be useless.

Spending a lot of time computing is not possible because the ncp's keep moving every X seconds (when fully zoomed out)

 

This will not be impossible to solve (a turing test that is 100% accurate is impossible in theory). But it will be significantly harder than current events, I think it will take quite a while for bots to solve this.

It would probably take long enough that by the time it is solved with a low margin of error, multiple similar event would have been added. Creating such events is much easier then solving them.

 

Not bad, but I fear this harms the players more than it does the bots themselves. What about vision-impaired players (colorblind, low vision, partial vision, etc)? What about players that can't process that amount of visual information in a specific amount of time? This also doesn't take into account the large sample size of AME/random events in-game; how often would this appear to disrupt/break macros without really affecting legitimate players?

 

------

 

I'll be a bit more terse - if one seeks to break bots, be sure that all possible ways for it to disrupt legitimate players are taken into account. There's no point to an AME if it harms the players more than the bots.

[iamsomebody1]

It's so easy to know who's botting if they don't reply after 5 mins there is approximately a 92% chance they are a bot (statistic is from thousands of tests I've conducted myself over the last 6 months) also you can tell because they are so much slower so if they are skilling like they have downs probably is a bot. (example rcing it takes them really long to empty the pouchs for the 2nd craft but normal people do it 3X faster)

 

If there alog is private that is also another sign there possibly botting I have reported 3186 bots since august and jagex has only banned/reset 28% of them

[Alphanos]

It's so easy to know who's botting if they don't reply after 5 mins there is approximately a 92% chance they are a bot (statistic is from thousands of tests I've conducted myself over the last 6 months) also you can tell because they are so much slower so if they are skilling like they have downs probably is a bot. (example rcing it takes them really long to empty the pouchs for the 2nd craft but normal people do it 3X faster)

 

If there alog is private that is also another sign there possibly botting I have reported 3186 bots since august and jagex has only banned/reset 28% of them

 

Please go away, troll.

 

OT: By using the streaming video idea only for randoms, the issue of low bandwidth should be possible to address. Jagex could make new randoms which are difficult to computationally solve, yet still require very little bandwidth to stream. These randoms could be less graphically intensive than standard Runescape. Normally, the idea of replacing all current randoms wouldn't be something I would suggest, but in this case it seems like it could result in the permanent eradication of all bots. It's feasible to spend a decent amount of development time on such a large payoff.

 

As for the specific random mentioned above, this is an excellent example of something which would be almost impossible for bots to solve under the idea of a streaming video engine mode. The idea itself could be tweaked to account for poor vision, but honestly regular Runescape is fairly vision-intensive, so there's only so much that can be done. If Jagex developed half a dozen ideas such as this, and implemented them alongside a streaming video engine mode for random events, bots could actually be a thing of the past.

 

Please post with refinements/problems/etc to this idea, but unless something else comes up, it's looking like this thread has indeed come up with a permanent technological solution to bots.

[iamsomebody1]

It's so easy to know who's botting if they don't reply after 5 mins there is approximately a 92% chance they are a bot (statistic is from thousands of tests I've conducted myself over the last 6 months) also you can tell because they are so much slower so if they are skilling like they have downs probably is a bot. (example rcing it takes them really long to empty the pouchs for the 2nd craft but normal people do it 3X faster)

 

If there alog is private that is also another sign there possibly botting I have reported 3186 bots since august and jagex has only banned/reset 28% of them

 

Please go away, troll.

 

OT: By using the streaming video idea only for randoms, the issue of low bandwidth should be possible to address. Jagex could make new randoms which are difficult to computationally solve, yet still require very little bandwidth to stream. These randoms could be less graphically intensive than standard Runescape. Normally, the idea of replacing all current randoms wouldn't be something I would suggest, but in this case it seems like it could result in the permanent eradication of all bots. It's feasible to spend a decent amount of development time on such a large payoff.

 

As for the specific random mentioned above, this is an excellent example of something which would be almost impossible for bots to solve under the idea of a streaming video engine mode. The idea itself could be tweaked to account for poor vision, but honestly regular Runescape is fairly vision-intensive, so there's only so much that can be done. If Jagex developed half a dozen ideas such as this, and implemented them alongside a streaming video engine mode for random events, bots could actually be a thing of the past.

 

Please post with refinements/problems/etc to this idea, but unless something else comes up, it's looking like this thread has indeed come up with a permanent technological solution to bots.

 

Are you upset? My results are real and I've been working very hard on them and I think I know more than someone who started playing rs in 2010 (runetracker, got to love it)

[Riptide Mage]

It's so easy to know who's botting if they don't reply after 5 mins there is approximately a 92% chance they are a bot (statistic is from thousands of tests I've conducted myself over the last 6 months) also you can tell because they are so much slower so if they are skilling like they have downs probably is a bot. (example rcing it takes them really long to empty the pouchs for the 2nd craft but normal people do it 3X faster)

 

If there alog is private that is also another sign there possibly botting I have reported 3186 bots since august and jagex has only banned/reset 28% of them

 

Please go away, troll.

 

OT: By using the streaming video idea only for randoms, the issue of low bandwidth should be possible to address. Jagex could make new randoms which are difficult to computationally solve, yet still require very little bandwidth to stream. These randoms could be less graphically intensive than standard Runescape. Normally, the idea of replacing all current randoms wouldn't be something I would suggest, but in this case it seems like it could result in the permanent eradication of all bots. It's feasible to spend a decent amount of development time on such a large payoff.

 

As for the specific random mentioned above, this is an excellent example of something which would be almost impossible for bots to solve under the idea of a streaming video engine mode. The idea itself could be tweaked to account for poor vision, but honestly regular Runescape is fairly vision-intensive, so there's only so much that can be done. If Jagex developed half a dozen ideas such as this, and implemented them alongside a streaming video engine mode for random events, bots could actually be a thing of the past.

 

Please post with refinements/problems/etc to this idea, but unless something else comes up, it's looking like this thread has indeed come up with a permanent technological solution to bots.

 

Are you upset? My results are real and I've been working very hard on them and I think I know more than someone who started playing rs in 2010 (runetracker, got to love it)

 

Runetracker only shows when the username was first searched for on runetracker

[Pluckey]

It's so easy to know who's botting if they don't reply after 5 mins there is approximately a 92% chance they are a bot (statistic is from thousands of tests I've conducted myself over the last 6 months) also you can tell because they are so much slower so if they are skilling like they have downs probably is a bot. (example rcing it takes them really long to empty the pouchs for the 2nd craft but normal people do it 3X faster)

 

If there alog is private that is also another sign there possibly botting I have reported 3186 bots since august and jagex has only banned/reset 28% of them

 

Please go away, troll.

 

OT: By using the streaming video idea only for randoms, the issue of low bandwidth should be possible to address. Jagex could make new randoms which are difficult to computationally solve, yet still require very little bandwidth to stream. These randoms could be less graphically intensive than standard Runescape. Normally, the idea of replacing all current randoms wouldn't be something I would suggest, but in this case it seems like it could result in the permanent eradication of all bots. It's feasible to spend a decent amount of development time on such a large payoff.

 

As for the specific random mentioned above, this is an excellent example of something which would be almost impossible for bots to solve under the idea of a streaming video engine mode. The idea itself could be tweaked to account for poor vision, but honestly regular Runescape is fairly vision-intensive, so there's only so much that can be done. If Jagex developed half a dozen ideas such as this, and implemented them alongside a streaming video engine mode for random events, bots could actually be a thing of the past.

 

Please post with refinements/problems/etc to this idea, but unless something else comes up, it's looking like this thread has indeed come up with a permanent technological solution to bots.

 

Are you upset? My results are real and I've been working very hard on them and I think I know more than someone who started playing rs in 2010 (runetracker, got to love it)

 

 

^Since when did a tracking site indicate when you began playing?