How is Blizzard detecting Bots?

[Genkidama]

I have used Honorbuddy for a few months during Cataclysm and never got banned. At some point I stopped using it because the number of bans was increasing.

A few days ago I finished programming "the engine" my own bot and only need to add profiles now.
My bot cannot be detected by warden because it's not injecting code any into the running game. The bot is completely written as an "Addon" inside WoW and manipulates the color of a pixel on the topleft corner. The pixel tells an outside program which button to press.

I still wonder what the major risks are. Does Blizzard have a detection system that auto-detects "bot-like" behaviour? Or do they investigate accounts once they have been reported by enough players? Does Blizzard target specific bots that are well-known or do they have a "general" bot detection that would target any bot?
I hope someone can share what we know about their banning behaviour.

Thanks!

 

[Beast]

If we knew, we wouldn't be banned ...
We will never know unless highly illegal activities take place, any and everything is speculation

 

[Ferhal]

They are writing to you

Blizz : Hey bro, u chillin
HBBro: 01010 Bro, sup
Blizz : R U a l33t bot ?1?
HBBro : Yes

 

[gamer427]

I recall them saying that they inspect bot behaviours, and sometimes even find bots from reports (but dont ban individual reports, they look for patterns on it so they can do a large scale ban) If your bot is personal and you have minimal reports, it shouldn't be an issue as it will already be hard to detect it outside memory.


This is all theoritical though, since blizzard have never said how it bans, but dropped stuff like that they will scan ram memory to search for hacks (which could even just be a ruse to make people believe they do that but they could adopt a totally didfferent method).

 

[virtual]

sales pitch ?

 

[Dazzic]

Pyrox did the whole addon inside of WoW thing back in uh... 0..07? Cataclysm was it's hype train xpac. Then blizzard bullied them out of existence and the guy send an automatic update containing a keylogger and a trojan virus to everyone trying to run the bot.

 

[plzdontban]

Pyrox did the whole addon inside of WoW thing back in uh... 0..07? Cataclysm was it's hype train xpac. Then blizzard bullied them out of existence and the guy send an automatic update containing a keylogger and a trojan virus to everyone trying to run the bot.

...They lost the lawsuit and made it very clear the implications of the results. They even managed to point everyone to honorbuddy as their successor lol. I probably still have the email telling me to check out their friends with the bee or something sly like that