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Old 05-10-2007, 10:09 AM
BluffTHIS! BluffTHIS! is offline
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Default Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

Most of you have probably seen the huge thread in the zoo on bots on FT, as well as many past threads on botting. Obviously for non-botters this is a serious issue that harms both the profitability of the game for winning players and is an integrity issue that can scare away fish. So I want to know if any of you programmers could write or concept design an algorithm to stop bots on a site and that was impervious to being adjusted to. That is, you could lay it all out right here and they couldn't do a damn thing to adjust.

My programming days are long behind me in Pascal and C, and I'm not up on the state of programming today much. But from what I understand, the key to stopping bots is screwing up their inputs, and that they depend on screen scraping for same, and also on constant updates to adjust to changes in site software. Obviously if one of you has a method that is highly unlikely to be adjusted to, but still could be if the algorithm were known, then it would be better to keep it on the QT and just make a private suggestion to the sites.

But I am asking can you come up with one here that can't be adjusted to? And note that another key factor, despite the fact that computers are unbelieveably fast, is that time is of the essence to a bot program, and merely slogging it down a certain percentage where it times out on tables would do the trick if that is possible (because of having to make more processing calculations of the scrapings via measures below). As a naive suggestion perhaps, can the RNG or other inputs for same like random mouse movements, etc., be used to constantly change the precise location of the flop? It would still of course have to fall in a general area, but could vary. Or could the software randomly do the same with hole cards? Or even vibrate the hole cards and flop slightly but not to a degree to be annoying to the average casual player (and of course where it hit each time to start a vibration would have to be random as well)?

This forum has a lot of very smart programmers and computer geeks, and I would place a helluva lot more confidence in the abilities of the posters on 2+2 in general than in that of the programmers the sites have. And *if* such a method could be worked out here, the sites would have zero excuse not to implement it. So can it be done and which of you can post a solution here?



N.B.: I want to give credit to poster Grasshopp3r for sharing some thoughts on anti-botting. I am witholding a specific measure he came up with at his request.
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  #2  
Old 05-10-2007, 11:39 AM
kerowo kerowo is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

Meh. Leave the drama bomb in the zoo. Withholding "ideas" that aren't implemented, and probably won't be implemented is silly. If the sites cared about the bot problem, if there is a bot problem, they would do something.

Off the top of my head I would think some kind of question written with the letters scrambled would be enough to mess up a bot. Not a captcha but a real, short answer question.
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  #3  
Old 05-10-2007, 12:00 PM
nuclear500 nuclear500 is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

A captcha like phrase was developed for online forms etc and could be implemented in a software for a site, but it might get annoying. I saw a captcha on a site last night that if I were color blind, would have been impossible to determine.

Only way I can think of that might be pretty close to untouchable would be to somehow determine if a keypress or mouse click came from a software interrupt or a hardware interrupt. If it was software it would simply be discarded. Without being a deep layer Windows API guru I can't tell you if it would be possible or not but if it were, that would solve it immediatley I would think. Don't believe you can fake a hardware interrupt from software without causing the kernel to go wacky.

I could be wrong.
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Old 05-10-2007, 12:33 PM
BluffTHIS! BluffTHIS! is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

I'm specifically asking for a software solution to prevent the bot software from being able to get correct inputs, not counter-measures like pop-ups.
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  #5  
Old 05-10-2007, 01:19 PM
nuclear500 nuclear500 is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

Then shifting the hole cards, flop, turn and river by mere pixels would be enough to stop most bots since precise coordinates are no longer possible. Even a shift of 20 pixels would throw the software off enough, but be only discernable to humans who are paying super close attention. It could be a random amount of pixels to shift too. Plus you could make the space between the table cards random as well.

A high level bot is going to scan the entire application screen and know area zones to look at it, so outside of changing the graphics somehow, I'm not sure you could prevent it. You talk about pixel shaking - well all a bot has to do then is take a screen cap and analyze that - in fact they probably already do do that.


Online "bots" in any game, whether it is a first person shooter or what have you, have always been around. All of the preventative measures that end up getting released are gotten around in some way eventually. Online Poker is no different.
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Old 05-11-2007, 02:09 AM
BluffTHIS! BluffTHIS! is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

[ QUOTE ]
A high level bot is going to scan the entire application screen and know area zones to look at it, so outside of changing the graphics somehow, I'm not sure you could prevent it. You talk about pixel shaking - well all a bot has to do then is take a screen cap and analyze that - in fact they probably already do do that.

[/ QUOTE ]


Obviously a better written bot is going to analyze better, and as you say capture the screen (via scraping) to do so. But my question is whether there is a fairly easy method to either make it take too long to analyze when multi-tabling, or indeed impossible.

Any other knowledgeable programmers out there that can comment?
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  #7  
Old 05-11-2007, 10:21 PM
pokergrader pokergrader is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

Its pretty much impossible. A good programmer can solve anything the clients throw at them.

Now that computers are fast enough to screen scrape and figure things out quickly, there is no reasonable obfuscation the poker room clients can do to solve the problem if they want to keep things usable and comfortable for the regular players.

Captchas can inhibit bots, but you can just hire 1 person for $6/hour to type them in over 15 bots, so they really aren't that useful (there are also software programs to captchas, but much like this exact situation, it is a lot easier to create something to foil than it is to prevent it, so I will use the worst case scenario for a bot user). It is sort of hard to make bots that are winning, but once they exist and can handle the current software, it is nearly impossible to detect them via software if the bot writer is smart enough.
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  #8  
Old 05-11-2007, 10:51 PM
BluffTHIS! BluffTHIS! is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

grader,

I haven't studied the subject in depth, but am aware of how big an issue screen scraping is as far as the internet and websites go, and that it seems to be nearly as intractable as the problem of spam. Yet there are many problems that seem intractable at one time that later get solved. Perhaps this won't be though.

Would you know if there is a way to stop screen scraping via a poker client directly interfering with the OS so as to prevent other non-necessary programs from reading the memory addresses of the screen? Or to embed something in the graphics displayed on the screen so as to fool a scraper into getting the wrong coordinates? Just tossing n00bish ideas out there.
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  #9  
Old 05-11-2007, 11:08 PM
_dave_ _dave_ is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

BluffTHIS,

Such a thread may well be more suitable for the SW forum, ubt since it is still here, maybe not.

[ QUOTE ]

My programming days are long behind me in Pascal and C, and I'm not up on the state of programming today much.


[/ QUOTE ]

Did you ever do Win32 GDI/GUI apps manually in C?
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  #10  
Old 05-12-2007, 01:45 AM
pokergrader pokergrader is offline
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Default Re: Can You Write a Sure-fire Algorithm to Stop Bots?

[ QUOTE ]
grader,

I haven't studied the subject in depth, but am aware of how big an issue screen scraping is as far as the internet and websites go, and that it seems to be nearly as intractable as the problem of spam. Yet there are many problems that seem intractable at one time that later get solved. Perhaps this won't be though.

Would you know if there is a way to stop screen scraping via a poker client directly interfering with the OS so as to prevent other non-necessary programs from reading the memory addresses of the screen? Or to embed something in the graphics displayed on the screen so as to fool a scraper into getting the wrong coordinates? Just tossing n00bish ideas out there.

[/ QUOTE ]

It just isn't possible. If you can screen scrape, you can have a bot. And there is no way to prevent screen scraping, at least in windows.
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