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Towards the perfect Botting Tool - Sikuli

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Tue, 04 May 2010 06:04:00 -0700

What would be the perfect botting tool? It would not be tied to a specific game, it would grab the screen information directly, and, ideally, it would have a visual programming environment.

A visual testing tool.

MIT students have come to help with the problem - Sikuli. Its a pretty nifty, open source GUI testing tool that I stumbled onto.

Its a pretty neat testing tool, at the very least.

"PROJECT SIKULI", http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/

Blizzard bans 320,000 accounts from Battle.net for cheating

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 05:18:00 -0700

Blizzard banned 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts for cheating, seemingly for using third party programs and exploits:

Weve recently banned over 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts that were found to be violating the Battle.net Terms of Use. If this is a first offense, the CD key associated with the banned account will be suspended for 30 days, while repeat offenders will see their keys banned permanently. All account ban decisions are final.

We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service. These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and well continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating.

Many account closures come as the direct result of tips emailed to our hacks team by legitimate Battle.net users. If you come across a hack, find a site responsible for distributing hacks, or have a replay of a newly available hack, please report this to our hacks team at hacks@blizzard.com or through our Hacks Report Form at http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&tag=hacksform

As always, thank you for your continued support, and we'll see you on Battle.net!

"Diablo II and Warcraft III Battle.net Bans", http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24401612571&sid=3000

NOTED: Cheating Pokemon's PokeWalker

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:51:04 -0700

Exercise. That's what kids need! Hey, let's put gaming and exercise together.

Sounds good until someone cheats.

Nintendo has responded with the PokeWalker pedometer attachment for the latest versions of Pokemon: HeartGold and SoulSilver for the Nintendo DS.

The inevitable cheat:

Ah, hardware hacks.... I guess this is a "bot"

Of course this is far from the first "real" game bot.

M. Fahey (2010), "Cheating At Pokémon And Walking At The Same Time", http://kotaku.com/5497763/cheating-at-pokemon-and-walking-at-the-same-time

NOTED: Global Agenda taking on Aimbots

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:49:00 -0800

Peanut butter and jelly. Ham and eggs. First Person Shooters and Aimbots.

Global Agenda, the recently launched MMO which is also a FPS, has, of course, had problems with aimbots.

The strategy? Lifetime bans (of course) and whatever the countermeasure de jour.

Depending on Global Agenda's success, there is going to be more upside for hacking the game than with a standard FPS. There is going to be gold (or some such) to be had which will be convertible to cash for all of those gold buyers no one wants to talk about.

We shall see how this goes, we shall see.

S. Brennan (2010), "Global Agenda takes aim at bots, aimbots specifically", http://www.massively.com/2010/02/24/global-agenda-takes-aim-at-bots-aimbots-specifically/

US-based Runescape Bot sellers Sued

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:22:00 -0800

Jagex continues its war on cheaters, botters, and frauders. The makers of the MMO, Runescape, are suing Florida-based Impulse software and its two owners in Boston for:

"a history and pattern of owning and operating cheating Web sites, including cheating sites for ... RuneScape," in violation of copyright, trademark and computer fraud laws.

"Via the website rscheata.com, Defendants actively market and promote the Bots with knowledge that they are encouraging and enabling Bot users to breach their contracts with Jagex.

Defendants' actions have unjustly profited Mark Snellman and Eric Snellman while negatively impacting the experience of millions of legitimate RuneScape® gamers and causing significant damage to Jagex, e.g., including but not limited to loss of player revenue due to reduction in the amount of legitimate RuneScape® players who quit when their playing experience was negatively impacted by the defendants' Bots; employee time investigating and addressing user accounts using Bots; employee time responding to complaints from legitimate RuneScape® players regarding others' use of the Bots, and the like."

The article includes some information about how the company's two bots Nexus and iBot bot worked:

"The Bot software downloads a copy of the RuneScape® game client from www.runescape.com just as would a legitimate player using a Web browser. Once downloaded the Bot software uses a process called reflection to examine the operation of the RuneScape® client, which is otherwise normally hidden from players. The Bot software then uses this information in conjunction with color sampling techniques to identify objects within RuneScape® that the Bot software wishes to interact with, such as trees, mining spots or monsters."

The company charges for the bot program with subscription prices ranging from $5/week to $5/month to $200 for a lifetime of botting.

R. Kahn (2010), "Online Game Company Sues 'Cheater' Web Site", http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/02/12/24648.htm