How does boting system works?

[vanhellsing089]

Im not asking about how to setup a bot party or anything like this.My question is about what is a bot software how its made on its very core.

I want to understand why it seems like impossible to narrow down these bots on each and every server.

Lets say its all about software/programming is it so hard to trace the "code"   how NcSoft checks about bots.

(They dont seem to check they just enjoy getting money but this is not what this topic is about)

 

[dorukasama]

Simple, does not work. Its insufficient due the high amount of bots.

[sour]

Clientsided anticheats are mostly limited in scope by privacy cyberlaws. I cant chime in on how they work or anything but you can find out more by googling. https://scholar.google.com/

Though the truth is, it's not hard to detect the popular bots dude. They just don't want to ban them and spend money on proactive anticheat. Otherwise they would have delayed bans for sure. Meaning, once a popular bot was detected, they wouldn't initially ban the user immediately. Instead, they create a log of users botting for a week or two then ban them all in one strike. 

Instead, what they have been doing here is banning them immediately. Which in turn, gives the bot developers and users time to deactivate their bot so the app wont open / warn other users, saving the vast majority of the bot users from getting banned.

[vanhellsing089]

25 minutes ago, sour said:

Clientsided anticheats are mostly limited in scope by privacy cyberlaws. I cant chime in on how they work or anything but you can find out more by googling. https://scholar.google.com/

Though the truth is, it's not hard to detect the popular bots dude. They just don't want to ban them and spend money on proactive anticheat. Otherwise they would have delayed bans for sure. Meaning, once a popular bot was detected, they wouldn't initially ban the user immediately. Instead, they create a log of users botting for a week or two then ban them all in one strike. 

Instead, what they have been doing here is banning them immediately. Which in turn, gives the bot developers and users time to deactivate their bot so the app wont open / warn other users, saving the vast majority of the bot users from getting banned.

Thanks for your response.Its amazingly wierd how they handle bots especially when from a brief search here in forum many people complain about

the servers(mostly Giran and Ti).In the beginning i was thinking that maybe detectios of  bot softwares were tricky and the company would loose money

from going on the offensive side and start working on these.So in conclusion its just an other way to get financials of Nc up.

This seems  to go with logic as any company wants to be financially competitive and strong

But whats most illogical is the people that bear up with these.Forcing them to pay  only to enter game and go on race against bots for who will be the first to finish

Suggestion to all..Stop giving your money and they will start listening to you...

 

[ZygiA]

1 hour ago, vanhellsing089 said:

Im not asking about how to setup a bot party or anything like this.My question is about what is a bot software how its made on its very core.

I want to understand why it seems like impossible to narrow down these bots on each and every server.

Lets say its all about software/programming is it so hard to trace the "code"   how NcSoft checks about bots.

(They dont seem to check they just enjoy getting money but this is not what this topic is about)

 

I doesn't work. It never did and it never will. Not for L2 anyway. 

[Izual]

If only they did an ip ban in all using bots.....

[Tool_of_Society]

19 hours ago, sour said:

Clientsided anticheats are mostly limited in scope by privacy cyberlaws. I cant chime in on how they work or anything but you can find out more by googling. https://scholar.google.com/

Though the truth is, it's not hard to detect the popular bots dude. They just don't want to ban them and spend money on proactive anticheat. Otherwise they would have delayed bans for sure. Meaning, once a popular bot was detected, they wouldn't initially ban the user immediately. Instead, they create a log of users botting for a week or two then ban them all in one strike. 

Instead, what they have been doing here is banning them immediately. Which in turn, gives the bot developers and users time to deactivate their bot so the app wont open / warn other users, saving the vast majority of the bot users from getting banned.

It's funny because that's what people say on every single forum for every single game. "IT"S NOT HARD THEY JUST DON"T WANT TO BAN THEM!@!!!". Which is double funny in games like World of Warcraft where blizzard is losing money to those bots because they are generally using fraud to acquire the accounts they (the botters) use.

You know it's "not hard" to detect a cyber intrusion either but that still keeps happening despite hundreds of billions spent to stop it.

Maybe things are a bit more complicated than you understand?

What you described about a popular bot being detected with the delayed punishment is what happened recently hence the spam of "OMG I WAS UNFAIRLY BANED!!" threads in this forum. Ncsoft gets crapped on not matter what they do. They ban the bots and the botters come here to cry complaining about how terrible Ncsoft is. Then three threads down someone is screaming in all caps about how NCsoft never bans bots...



 

[Tool_of_Society]

16 hours ago, Izual said:

If only they did an ip ban in all using bots.....

That would be extremely dumb. Please refrain from making suggestions when you can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to learn about the subject matter.

Here's why it would be a dumb idea. Most people have dynamic IPs so all they would have to do is restart their modem. IT's super easy to change IPs even if you have a static IP. There's this thing called.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
That is used by ISPs schools apartment complexes and more.

[marcysiek]

It doesn't work at the moment. It seems they just ban random accounts, probability that they will hit a bot is very high.

Getting rid of bots requires only one thing: active gm's in game (they don't have to be online 24/7, just check some areas from time to time). There are areas very affected by bots like forgotten temple (which is almost full of bots), elven village (and other starter villages maybe too, bots are spamming 1k adena quest there all the time)

[AngeMarkel]

5 hours ago, marcysiek said:

It doesn't work at the moment. It seems they just ban random accounts, probability that they will hit a bot is very high.

Getting rid of bots requires only one thing: active gm's in game (they don't have to be online 24/7, just check some areas from time to time). There are areas very affected by bots like forgotten temple (which is almost full of bots), elven village (and other starter villages maybe too, bots are spamming 1k adena quest there all the time)

not to forget about cruma tower crater (dw book) and EV.

There is a clan "Ponyland" which farms afk with 2 bot partys. I guess this Clan doesnt even have one active player

[Dondiwa]

Kill summons and they die. 1 summon kill gives like 100 karma and 0 pk points - this is nothing compared to 1.5h+ cooldown on resummon. I am cleaning this karma in minute or two.

[Dondiwa]

Dont wait gms - do it yourself.

[sour]

9 hours ago, Tool_of_Society said:

It's funny because that's what people say on every single forum for every single game. "IT"S NOT HARD THEY JUST DON"T WANT TO BAN THEM!@!!!". Which is double funny in games like World of Warcraft where blizzard is losing money to those bots because they are generally using fraud to acquire the accounts they (the botters) use.

You know it's "not hard" to detect a cyber intrusion either but that still keeps happening despite hundreds of billions spent to stop it.

Maybe things are a bit more complicated than you understand?

What you described about a popular bot being detected with the delayed punishment is what happened recently hence the spam of "OMG I WAS UNFAIRLY BANED!!" threads in this forum. Ncsoft gets crapped on not matter what they do. They ban the bots and the botters come here to cry complaining about how terrible Ncsoft is. Then three threads down someone is screaming in all caps about how NCsoft never bans bots...



 

I know because I do. We've been having this discussion since 2005.

If they wanted to ban the bots, they would use delayed ban. Period. And adreno, which is what the vaaaast majority of botters use, didn't have a delayed ban - they were immediate. 

Btw, wow's anticheat, warden, has defeated almost every bot out there. Its been that way for a long time. You can literally sell tokens from blizzard store for more gold per dollar than buying from gold seller. Having good antibot protection isn't something new at all.  

 

 

[sour]

9 hours ago, Tool_of_Society said:

That would be extremely dumb. Please refrain from making suggestions when you can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to learn about the subject matter.

Here's why it would be a dumb idea. Most people have dynamic IPs so all they would have to do is restart their modem. IT's super easy to change IPs even if you have a static IP. There's this thing called.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
That is used by ISPs schools apartment complexes and more.

No but they can use hwid. Better then nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

9 hours ago, Tool_of_Society said:

It's funny because that's what people say on every single forum for every single game. "IT"S NOT HARD THEY JUST DON"T WANT TO BAN THEM!@!!!". Which is double funny in games like World of Warcraft where blizzard is losing money to those bots because they are generally using fraud to acquire the accounts they (the botters) use.

You know it's "not hard" to detect a cyber intrusion either but that still keeps happening despite hundreds of billions spent to stop it.

Maybe things are a bit more complicated than you understand?

What you described about a popular bot being detected with the delayed punishment is what happened recently hence the spam of "OMG I WAS UNFAIRLY BANED!!" threads in this forum. Ncsoft gets crapped on not matter what they do. They ban the bots and the botters come here to cry complaining about how terrible Ncsoft is. Then three threads down someone is screaming in all caps about how NCsoft never bans bots...



 

I forgot to mention above. There are popular scripts out there for quests that bots have been running for weeks. You can set in certain areas of towns and watch huge bot parties run the exact same pathing over and over through town to gatekeeper lol. Again, these bots have been running for weeks and have been reported hundreds of times! Maybe close to a thousand.

A simple algorithm could detect people using these free scripts, running that same pathway. 

But we can never expect that from the gms in game, they don't even login to manual ban. Same L2 story since forever. 

[Devoid]

2 minutes ago, sour said:

No but they can use hwid.

HWID is, by definition, a PI sort of data. It represents an exact hardware configuration, typically factoring in hardware part numbers. Which means if they ban by HWID, then EU residents may request to destroy all PI about them after they get banned – rendering the HWID ban useless.

2 minutes ago, sour said:

I forgot to mention above. There are free scripts out there for quests that bots have been running for weeks. You can set in certain areas of towns and watch huge bot parties run the exact same pathing over and over through town to gatekeeper lol. Again, these bots have been running for weeks and have been reported hundreds of times! Maybe close to a thousand.

A simple algorithm could detect people using these free scripts, running that same pathway. 

Yes, it could. But that exceeds the max allowed effort value in NCwest's minmaxing scheme.

[Tool_of_Society]

2 hours ago, sour said:

No but they can use hwid. Better then nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/

Man you really don't know what you're talking about. There are damned good reasons why companies don't try to HWID ban or IP ban(outside of region enforcement).  Devoid's response touches on one of MANY reasons.
 

Quote

I forgot to mention above. There are free scripts out there for quests that bots have been running for weeks. You can set in certain areas of towns and watch huge bot parties run the exact same pathing over and over through town to gatekeeper lol. Again, these bots have been running for weeks and have been reported hundreds of times! Maybe close to a thousand.

So these bots have been reported for weeks but have never actually managed to level out of that area despite running there for weeks... Me thinks you're exagerating greaty.

I started leveling up a new character to join my party 3 or 4 days ago. The newbie areas had very few bots running around. The spider areas were pretty much vacant too which used to be a super popular area for the bots. Now I did see a few bots running along doing stuff but nothing like you're describing.

They are fighting the bots but it's a difficult uphill battle that never ends. A bot running today might get axed tomorrow or a week from now. Meanwhile the person running the bot is constantly adding more to the server.

Ncsoft's fight against bots is obvious in the occasional spurt of "OMGZ I WAS FALSELY BANNZED!!!" threads that pop up occasionally as popular bots are detected and banned. The bot makers themselves then work to make the bot undetectable or harder to detect and the "game" continues.

 

[sour]

19 hours ago, Tool_of_Society said:

Man you really don't know what you're talking about. There are damned good reasons why companies don't try to HWID ban or IP ban(outside of region enforcement).  Devoid's response touches on one of MANY reasons.
 

So these bots have been reported for weeks but have never actually managed to level out of that area despite running there for weeks... Me thinks you're exagerating greaty.

I started leveling up a new character to join my party 3 or 4 days ago. The newbie areas had very few bots running around. The spider areas were pretty much vacant too which used to be a super popular area for the bots. Now I did see a few bots running along doing stuff but nothing like you're describing.

They are fighting the bots but it's a difficult uphill battle that never ends. A bot running today might get axed tomorrow or a week from now. Meanwhile the person running the bot is constantly adding more to the server.

Ncsoft's fight against bots is obvious in the occasional spurt of "OMGZ I WAS FALSELY BANNZED!!!" threads that pop up occasionally as popular bots are detected and banned. The bot makers themselves then work to make the bot undetectable or harder to detect and the "game" continues.

 

yo, I'm not arguing bots are easy to get rid of. I'm arguing that NCsoft doesn't apply enough effort into combating them. There is a difference.

And there is no reason to be rude and telling people they don't know what theyre talking about or they shouldn't speak. Or whatever it is you have been saying. At this point I just skim through your posts.

Many game companies use hwid bans btw.... Wow, archeage, ffxiv, eve and guess who else - Lineage 2.... L2 hasn't been for bots for a long while however. They don't use delayed bans. They don't manual ban. There are bots in dwarven area that have been there since week 2 or 3. There are videos of dozens of bots running through elven village and in other areas posted on these very forums - running the same pathways. Botting was so safe it was almost considered legal on official for a loooong time. I'm not trying to be rude but youre way out of the loop.

 

 

[Tool_of_Society]

On 11/14/2018 at 10:36 PM, sour said:

yo, I'm not arguing bots are easy to get rid of. I'm arguing that NCsoft doesn't apply enough effort into combating them. There is a difference.

And there is no reason to be rude and telling people they don't know what theyre talking about or they shouldn't speak. Or whatever it is you have been saying. At this point I just skim through your posts.

Many game companies use hwid bans btw.... Wow, archeage, ffxiv, eve and guess who else - Lineage 2.... L2 hasn't been for bots for a long while however. They don't use delayed bans. They don't manual ban. There are bots in dwarven area that have been there since week 2 or 3. There are videos of dozens of bots running through elven village and in other areas posted on these very forums - running the same pathways. Botting was so safe it was almost considered legal on official for a loooong time. I'm not trying to be rude but youre way out of the loop.

 

 

Look snowflake it isn't rude to call out someone's ignorance when they are making all kinds of baseless claims due to said ignorance.

None of those games use hwid bans. Once again you're spouting off about something you don't understand. Some games do use MAC address to ban which some people call a hwid ban. The reality is mac addresses are trivially easy to spoof.. HWIDs aren't even a problem either as people are getting past the fornite bans with an usb install of windows or tossing a junk drive or something in the system. Possibly could get by it with some registry changes.  BTW I played eve for a very long time (12 boxed for years). I also played FFixv and WoW both of which had massive bot issues. WoW had 20-30 accountsin every major city using the characters to spell out gold selling sites IN THE FREAKING AIR on every major server. My second favorite bots in WOW were the ones that ran around under maps taking all the resource nodes. Eve only got rid of the gold spammers by instituting PLEX. That basically killed the spam almost over night. All those games require you to buy the game and to pay a subscription and all of them have gold spam/bots.

Just read what you've typing. You're trying to claim the same dwarfs are leveling in the same newbie area for 3 weeks. That makes absolutely no sense as they should be well leveled beyond anything resembling drops after that long. This isn't like the old days where the dorf bots would run en mass into guards to delevel (that hasn't worked in some time).

Delayed bans is how bans work for the ones who aren't automatically detected. Reports pile up the GM goes and investigates gathers evidence and then a judgement is rendered which could be weeks after the botting was done.

I recently leveled a new character up to join my party and I saw a couple bots the entire time. One I wasn't sure if it was a bot but I knew for sure when it sent me a gold spam the next day. I ran through the spider areas and all the bot hot spots where ponies galore used to be and they were cleared out. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the botters finish registering new accounts and creating new characters to bot but that's the nature of the game. It's a never ending fight because the botters never give up. The fight is ongoing as easily seen by the wave of "OMGZ I WAS WRTONGLY BANNED!!" recently. Which just happened to coincide with a popular bot being detected by NCsoft....

 

 

 

[WutWutWut]

On 11/13/2018 at 1:51 AM, vanhellsing089 said:

Im not asking about how to setup a bot party or anything like this.My question is about what is a bot software how its made on its very core.

I want to understand why it seems like impossible to narrow down these bots on each and every server.

Lets say its all about software/programming is it so hard to trace the "code"   how NcSoft checks about bots.

(They dont seem to check they just enjoy getting money but this is not what this topic is about)

 

Bot programs hide itself, and mask itself randomly , they use software to fake that signals sent by the bot program came from hardware (physical mouse/keyboard) etc

The only best solution for these bots is active gms who could traverse popular areas and jail those individuals who they seem suspicious and who others report. But thats a job like any other and gm has to be paid per hour which ncsoft dont rly want to do. This at least would discourage high lvl botting on main chars

[Khania]

to identify a botter, hit him, if his summon heals him or his mules heals him instantly, is a bot

 

 

[sour]

On ‎11‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 11:40 PM, Tool_of_Society said:

Look snowflake it isn't rude to call out someone's ignorance when they are making all kinds of baseless claims due to said ignorance.

None of those games use hwid bans. Once again you're spouting off about something you don't understand. Some games do use MAC address to ban which some people call a hwid ban. The reality is mac addresses are trivially easy to spoof.. HWIDs aren't even a problem either as people are getting past the fornite bans with an usb install of windows or tossing a junk drive or something in the system. Possibly could get by it with some registry changes.  BTW I played eve for a very long time (12 boxed for years). I also played FFixv and WoW both of which had massive bot issues. WoW had 20-30 accountsin every major city using the characters to spell out gold selling sites IN THE FREAKING AIR on every major server. My second favorite bots in WOW were the ones that ran around under maps taking all the resource nodes. Eve only got rid of the gold spammers by instituting PLEX. That basically killed the spam almost over night. All those games require you to buy the game and to pay a subscription and all of them have gold spam/bots.

Just read what you've typing. You're trying to claim the same dwarfs are leveling in the same newbie area for 3 weeks. That makes absolutely no sense as they should be well leveled beyond anything resembling drops after that long. This isn't like the old days where the dorf bots would run en mass into guards to delevel (that hasn't worked in some time).

Delayed bans is how bans work for the ones who aren't automatically detected. Reports pile up the GM goes and investigates gathers evidence and then a judgement is rendered which could be weeks after the botting was done.

I recently leveled a new character up to join my party and I saw a couple bots the entire time. One I wasn't sure if it was a bot but I knew for sure when it sent me a gold spam the next day. I ran through the spider areas and all the bot hot spots where ponies galore used to be and they were cleared out. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the botters finish registering new accounts and creating new characters to bot but that's the nature of the game. It's a never ending fight because the botters never give up. The fight is ongoing as easily seen by the wave of "OMGZ I WAS WRTONGLY BANNED!!" recently. Which just happened to coincide with a popular bot being detected by NCsoft....

 

 

 

Yo buttercup, they do use hwid bans. Its funny how after I state they do, you counter my statement without googling it yourself. It's usually for more extreme cases like altering memory. 

And I don't need a lesson in its effectiveness. No one is arguing against it or for it except for you. I stopped reading there >.<

 

[Elek]

On 11/14/2018 at 5:32 AM, sour said:

I know because I do. We've been having this discussion since 2005.

If they wanted to ban the bots, they would use delayed ban. Period. And adreno, which is what the vaaaast majority of botters use, didn't have a delayed ban - they were immediate. 

Btw, wow's anticheat, warden, has defeated almost every bot out there. Its been that way for a long time. You can literally sell tokens from blizzard store for more gold per dollar than buying from gold seller. Having good antibot protection isn't something new at all.  

 

 

That's blizzard mate, do not compare blizzard to NCsoft

[warborn]

5 hours ago, Elek said:

That's blizzard mate, do not compare blizzard to NCsoft

Who was comparing anywhere in this thread?

That post was in response to that noob kid said wow doesn't hwid ban..... because apparently "...no one tries to hwid or ip ban - at all...". 

[KingdomBuilder]

All i can say is that, playing with bot (Heal/Buff) is not funny anymore. Not a competitive action.

[Tool_of_Society]

On 11/19/2018 at 5:21 PM, sour said:

Yo buttercup, they do use hwid bans. Its funny how after I state they do, you counter my statement without googling it yourself. It's usually for more extreme cases like altering memory. 

And I don't need a lesson in its effectiveness. No one is arguing against it or for it except for you. I stopped reading there >.<

 

So I went and looked to make sure before posting That's why I was able to give specifics on how their bans work.

You assert that I'm completely wrong and provide no information to back your statement up. I'm just supposed to believe you and not that lying google or the devs or the cheaters themselves discussing how they get around the bans.