Optimus, aka Automated Bot Detection System?

[Trent!]

I know this information was released near the beginning of the month, but here it is:

On 9 August 2012, during the August Fansite Staff Call Conference, Mod Mark discussed the upcoming bot detection system that would be similar to 2011's ClusterFlutterer update.

Question: What are you doing about the bots right now? Are we going to have a bot nuke in the near future or what?

Answer: We are working on something right now. It is getting towards the end of completion. I expect something to be going live into the game well before we launch the Combat Beta live into the game. I'm reluctant to tell you too much, but it's a system that I'm quite pleased with.
We're basically trying to go for something which can automatically detect bots rather than something that requires some kind of manual process from us. We're looking at more of an automated system and obviously any automated system, we need to make sure it's 100% perfect. I don't want to see any players being banned or warned when they haven't been using a bot at all. So it is something that I promise you we are working on right now and we are towards the end of the process very similar to last year when we sort of did a big bot nuke October time. We just need to make sure we are getting it right and it is something that we've been working on for at least three months if not longer.

We got some interesting stuff there and there will be a little bit of content in there as well supporting it. It's quite cool. That's all I'm gonna say, sorry.

Believe you me, it's a huge issue for us as well. I absolutely hate the fact that you can see bots in certain areas of the game. I don't like the effect that it has on the economy. I don't like the effect it has on training rates. We're not, we're no way support it whatsoever as a company. It's just that if you're gonna go down an automated route, you need to make sure it's absolutely perfect and you know 1% error isn't good enough if I'm banning thousands of accounts I don't want to accidentally be banning tens or hundreds of legitimate players. So that's why we need to make sure we get it right.

Considering he says '3 months if not more,' and 3 months ago was the same month that Optimus' platform was installed. He says they are trying to make it absolutely perfect before release, so that would explain the delays on the release. Also, he does state that it is preferred that they release it BEFORE the Evolution of Combat is fully released, which is predicted to be very soon.

Also, Mod Emilee has stated that the Optimus system will be something that is constantly running, so it seems to fit the bill even more-so as an automated system.

Another tidbit that could be *possibly* be related, is that earlier this morning (somewhere between 3-5am 8/22/2012) there was a system update, and a J Mod posted saying that this updated included a feature for tracking data "for a future update." Who knows what this part is for, but possibly related.

Thanks YoHoJo for finding the pic for me :3

What do you guys think?

 

[YoHoJo]

As always not much to think until it happens, all we can do is speculate and guess and assume really.

Once it happens we will know more about it. What bots it has killed (if any), I'm guessing it's just aimed at reflection/injection bots for now.

 

[Trent!]

As always not much to think until it happens, all we can do is speculate and guess and assume really.

Once it happens we will know more about it. What bots it has killed (if any), I'm guessing it's just aimed at reflection/injection bots for now.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's going to be aimed at bots of every kind. The whole purpose of this automated system is to replace the manual work that is currently required by J Mods to detect and ban bots, regardless of their platform. The only kind of automated system I can think of that would JUST be aimed at injection/reflection/interception would be the incorporation of hidden surface removal methods. Looks like this is going to be the new era of botting after it is launched

 

[Soviet Union]

If they ban /stop all the bots the money they make will drop so dramatically, I can't see them banning/stopping "all" bots simply because they would lose so much money from membership.

 

[XWX]

Things like this certain people can pick up enough hints to get any idea of how the detection system will work. They stress the fact that the system must be tweaked to prevent legit players from getting flagged & banned by it. So what does that tell us? That means it's not an absolute detection that "This player has loaded a modified client", or "This player has a certain program running while they're playing Runescape". It's more than that, a deeper detection system.

Based on that little bit about the possibility of it making false positives we can assume it will look for something along the lines of human behavior. Repetitive tasks maybe? Perhaps X amount of hours in a small area of RS. How often does the player interact with others? How many of one raw material does this account have, is it the only high number of raw materials the account has? How much XP is this player getting in a certain skill; does it remain this same rate of XP every time they do this activity?

I'm not making any accusations, but keep in mind examples like these are some of the factors Jagex can keep track of and can mistake bots for legitimate players. Not many bots will pass any of those tests. It's the ones like RiD and (most of) Simba scripts that would have the least chance of being flagged.


I didn't mean to talk so much, I just thought I'd point out that we can get a good idea of what's to come if we just pay attention to the hints.

Thanks for the info, Trent!. And also, thanks for that image YoHoJo. Yeah you're right, no one at all will know for sure what's to, so it's pointless to try and adjust at this time, but if we have an idea of what they might look for we can adjust stop running bots/scripts that could be picked up on now (to avoid the ban) and adjust later after we know for sure what's being monitored.

 

[Runescaper_Omega]

I think the new bot nuke will be in 2 months, But I think colour bots will stillbe alive.

 

[speedster]

Damn, never knew about this! Thanks for sharing Trent! <3

But one thing I am not getting, Mark told us they are going for an automated system to ban botting accounts ?! Does that mean they won't break bots and that they can turn off this automated system at any time ... Meaning if Jagex changes it's mind about bots they will be able to return in 1 second...

I would have been really happy to hear that the bot nuke would be an automated system that will break the bots... automatically lol (i have no idea how they could do this ) not a system that bans everyone *sigh*

 

[Trent!]

Damn, never knew about this! Thanks for sharing Trent! <3

But one thing I am not getting, Mark told us they are going for an automated system to ban botting accounts ?! Does that mean they won't break bots and that they can turn off this automated system at any time ... Meaning if Jagex changes it's mind about bots they will be able to return in 1 second...

I would have been really happy to hear that the bot nuke would be an automated system that will break the bots... automatically lol (i have no idea how they could do this ) not a system that bans everyone *sigh*

Well tbh, if they are spending months of work on the system, I highly doubt they will just use it for awhile and then say fuck it and remove it. Also, they mention "detection" instead of breaking bots. I'd say that if they don't find a permanent way to break the injection/reflection bots, their best bet is to focus their efforts on banning them.


Mod Mark mentions a 1% error ratio where humans are detected. This would mean that since they are perfecting that to 0% or close to that, a bot would actually have to pass as human to get away. Based on monitoring my own gameplay, this would mean mouse movements that ACTUALLY pass as human. Next time you're playing RS legit, try to actually pay attention to the path and way that your cursor moves throughout different tasks, and also notice when you are not specifically clicking on anything, but just fucking around with the mouse. Now can you honestly say that your bot's movements look the same as that? I know that RiD already has that part down using knowledge that he learned throughout earning his degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, but I know that there are a lot of other bots who will really need to work on this aspect if Jagex has found some way to detect inhuman movements automatically.

In addition to that, I'd say that humans don't maintain the same same exp rates over long periods of time, so perhaps they will be looking for inhuman consistency in experience rates?

I noticed that they seem to be tracking data. What if it's possible that they are tracking either the behavior or the movements of a bunch of accounts in the same area, and they tune their detection system to look for similarities between the different accounts to try and sort them into groups, which would allow them to figure out that X accounts are using the same script/bot, which would make it even easier to identify mass amounts of bots. If they go as far as something this advanced, this would mean bad things for people using very popular scripts/bots, unless the bot makers were to design different behaviors and different movement algorithms for individuals.


All the above is just theory, but who knows what Jagex has in store.

 

[Mando]

Even though I haven't botted since the Bot Nuke, thanks for the information. I like looking at this type of information from an "outsiders" perspective a.k.a Ex-Botter that doesn't bot anymore.

It will be interesting how all of this pans out. I miss rsbots.net oh too much.

 

We're basically trying to go for something which can automatically detect bots rather than something that requires some kind of manual process from us.

So they are trying to write a piece of automated software...to catch and ban people that are using automated software ?
I'm loving the irony in this!

 

[Trent!]

This seems to be coming sometime this month (unless a few weeks = 4+ to Jagex)

This week, you should notice a significant reduction in gold farmer spam. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will not only be launching our most comprehensive and formidable anti-bot update but players will also see a significant upgrade to their accounts' security to protect against phishing and hijacking. This is called Jagex Account Guardian, and we're introducing it within the next two weeks.