I know how they are catching you

[Deliver]

Hello,

I am a software engineering grad student that is focusing on network security. I have interned with security firms and I think I can help some of you devs that have been getting hit.

9/10 hackers we catch are not done by us deciphering and tracing their code. Most good hackers are geniuses and it would take us YEARS to decipher and trace the encryption on a single program. We catch them because they shoot themselves in the foot by making themselves public.

1. Developers, I really hope the paypal account you have tied to the "DONATE" button is not the same paypal account on your Bnet. All I have to do is click that donate...and I know who you are.

2. Do not use the same emails and user names that you use on this forum with your bnet account OR ANY SOCIAL MEDIA. We caught a small fry in Florida a week ago because I traced his Twitter account name to his XBOX Live account name which were almost identical, and OH LOOKY! his xbox live account is tied to his FACEBOOK.....didnt make much of a difference that he always tweeted about his hacks over a Prox.y at that point lol

NOW SOME IN GAME BOTTING TIPS
Radonic is 100% right about how they are tracking you by "How you operate your money". They have software that fishes through logs of game data and flags your account if your activity correlates their "bot" template. Its all in your game logs and they have your complete history from the moment that key was entered.

If I worked in Blizzards anti-bot department, I would:

look at the top 5% of players that have the highest trade of Gold. (trading is rare in this game because the AH makes it almost obsolete. When you trade 15 mil from one account to your main it is LOGGED and SAVED to your account forever!!!! This means that they can look into your account logs and see that some very generous player is just giving you tons of money for nothing....I can almost guarantee that ALL of the top 5% highest trades are gold sellers and botters. Who else would be trading 15 mil transactions for absolutely nothing)

They are finding you based on how you transfer your items/gold.

How to stay under the radar:

If you have an item that you want to transfer from one account to another account DO NOT TRADE THE ITEM!
1. Go into a public game with your bot and your main and maybe some friends.
2. Leave the city and go into a dungeon where their are enemies.
3. DROP all of the items that your bot has on him.
4. pick up all of the items with your main.

Also,
Do not buy and Resale in the AH a lot. Only buy what your going to use and sell what you don't need. They do flag accounts that buy items just to resell them for quick profit.


This way you are not going to be put into the trade logs which are VERY easily searchable. The items will be logged as "picked up in dungeon" instead of "Traded by "

I am not 100% accurate but I am pretty sure this will keep you safe...Its worked wonders for me

 

[Dragonboy]

Someone give this man a cookie. Good post. So dropping then picking up the items in Old Tristram won't be sufficient. It has got to be a dungeon?

So what would you suggest for offloading your gold apart from using the RMAH? Assume a player is from say US and is botting in the EU so it would be rather difficult setting up RMAH. Would it be worth the hassle to sort it out or are there alternatives?

 

[mephuser1000]

Hello,

I am a software engineering grad student that is focusing on network security. I have interned with security firms and I think I can help some of you devs that have been getting hit.

9/10 hackers we catch are not done by us deciphering and tracing their code. Most good hackers are geniuses and it would take us YEARS to decipher and trace the encryption on a single program. We catch them because they shoot themselves in the foot by making themselves public.

1. Developers, I really hope the paypal account you have tied to the "DONATE" button is not the same paypal account on your Bnet. All I have to do is click that donate...and I know who you are.

2. Do not use the same emails and user names that you use on this forum with your bnet account OR ANY SOCIAL MEDIA. We caught a small fry in Florida a week ago because I traced his Twitter account name to his XBOX Live account name which were almost identical, and OH LOOKY! his xbox live account is tied to his FACEBOOK.....didnt make much of a difference that he always tweeted about his hacks over a ***** at that point lol

NOW SOME IN GAME BOTTING TIPS
Radonic is 100% right about how they are tracking you by "How you operate your money". They have software that fishes through logs of game data and flags your account if your activity correlates their "bot" template. Its all in your game logs and they have your complete history from the moment that key was entered.

If I worked in Blizzards anti-bot department, I would:

look at the top 5% of players that have the highest trade of Gold. (trading is rare in this game because the AH makes it almost obsolete. When you trade 15 mil from one account to your main it is LOGGED and SAVED to your account forever!!!! This means that they can look into your account logs and see that some very generous player is just giving you tons of money for nothing....I can almost guarantee that ALL of the top 5% highest trades are gold sellers and botters. Who else would be trading 15 mil transactions for absolutely nothing)

They are finding you based on how you transfer your items/gold.

How to stay under the radar:

If you have an item that you want to transfer from one account to another account DO NOT TRADE THE ITEM!
1. Go into a public game with your bot and your main and maybe some friends.
2. Leave the city and go into a dungeon where their are enemies.
3. DROP all of the items that your bot has on him.
4. pick up all of the items with your main.

Also,
Do not buy and Resale in the AH a lot. Only buy what your going to use and sell what you don't need. They do flag accounts that buy items just to resell them for quick profit.


This way you are not going to be put into the trade logs which are VERY easily searchable. The items will be logged as "picked up in dungeon" instead of "Traded by "

I am not 100% accurate but I am pretty sure this will keep you safe...Its worked wonders for me

Don't think that there's any option to drop off 15M gold onto the dungeon floor for the Main/Mule to pick it up.

 

[Deliver]

Don't think that there's any option to drop off 15M gold onto the dungeon floor for the Main/Mule to pick it up.

be creative.....

With gold, you could buy 1 really expensive item from the AH that you could drop over and resell for profit. I dunno how safe or traceable this would be. I on the other hand buy multiple crappy cheap level 62's that I use for blacksmith fodder...But then again I love smithing almost as much as I love botting.

Someone give this man a cookie. Good post. So dropping then picking up the items in Old Tristram won't be sufficient. It has got to be a dungeon?

So what would you suggest for offloading your gold apart from using the RMAH? Assume a player is from say US and is botting in the EU so it would be rather difficult setting up RMAH. Would it be worth the hassle to sort it out or are there alternatives?

I don't know how extensive and detailed their item log history is.
I would be safe and drop my items where there would be normal item drops. It would look suspicious if all of your gear was logged as "Picked up in New Tristram" other than "Picked up in Watch Tower"
I am almost 100% that if they still looked at the items they could see the complete log history including who dropped it and who picked it up, but there are millions of items dropped every day and if a manager was looking through the logs they would not feel the need to investigate "picked up in Watch Tower" because a lot of stuff is normally picked up there.



Remember, this post was just tips on how to stay under the radar. Botting is like sex: if your going to do it; do it safely.
There is always a chance something bad can happen no matter how much protection you wear.
But, I would rather be safe and have a little less of a reward, than be reckless and get greater the reward.

 

[Bagge]

there were people banned for botting 15 mins to 4 hours, how would you explain that ? Besides that trading mass amounts of gold or posting lots of auctions has and will always flag you ( they do the same in wow ), blizzard must have got something to detect something very quickly on occasion which 100% identifies that theres a bot being used on the account, otherwise i couldnt explain how they ban some guest accs or even normal accs after a minimum amount of usage.

they also definately dont collect data withj gold picked up etc, because of the false data they would get. Also some people like me had there 200+ mills accs untouched while to 50+ mills picked up got a ban. So they must have 1 thing to detect anything, we just dont know what it is.

 

[CodenameG]

i hate to be the barrier of bad news but as far as but detection goes, most of this is pretty much common sense. as far as "make sure your donation paypal and your bnet paypal isnt the same" blizzard is far too fucking busy then to "investigate" to try and find people to ban, specially when they are taking so many people out who aren't as active in mixing up their profiles and routines. paying GM's to scourer the forums for information to link someone to a BNet account isn't what blizzard is about.

 

[Deliver]

there were people banned for botting 15 mins to 4 hours, how would you explain that ? Besides that trading mass amounts of gold or posting lots of auctions has and will always flag you ( they do the same in wow ), blizzard must have got something to detect something very quickly on occasion which 100% identifies that theres a bot being used on the account, otherwise i couldnt explain how they ban some guest accs or even normal accs after a minimum amount of usage.

they also definately dont collect data withj gold picked up etc, because of the false data they would get. Also some people like me had there 200+ mills accs untouched while to 50+ mills picked up got a ban. So they must have 1 thing to detect anything, we just dont know what it is.

I do not think they have software that can detect a bot...if they did we would ALL be banned. So they most likely have 15-20 people thats sole job is to detect botters.

Potential theories to explain how people are getting caught in the first 15 min - 4hours of playing:

1. If their account was previously banned, and this bot was to replace a banned bot...then they probably flagged your IP address and were notified that PC. 105.43.3.2 just logged in with two new accounts

2. How many people play act 1 normal? there are probably millions of players in inferno, and only hundreds in normal act 1 at a given time. So it would be harder to screen Act 1 inferno over Act 1 normal. In other words...if you are running queens in act 1 normal leveling profiles, your logs will stick out like a sore thumb. All I would have to do is tell my Spider program, "Narrow searches of players that have done Fallen Star 7 times in the last 3 hours" Guess what...theres prob going to be only 5 accounts they have to look at...and they are probably all botters

3. I can almost guarantee you that Act 1 normal is heavily screened because of how low the player density is.

 

[Deliver]

i hate to be the barrier of bad news but as far as but detection goes, most of this is pretty much common sense. as far as "make sure your donation paypal and your bnet paypal isnt the same" blizzard is far too fucking busy then to "investigate" to try and find people to ban, specially when they are taking so many people out who aren't as active in mixing up their profiles and routines. paying GM's to scourer the forums for information to link someone to a BNet account isn't what blizzard is about.

Your probably right...I interned for a private defense agency; so our investigative techniques might be a little more extreme than blizzards...I just really like this community and after watching swolbyn leave, I finally decided to speak out and see if any of my advice could help.

I would not underestimate Blizzards anti-bot team. They are programmers just like us...and to be a programmer they must be somewhat intelligent. Blizzard has already tried to sue the Buddy team. If they are willing to do that, don't you think they would be willing to research the developers?

 

[michael9]

I do not think they have software that can detect a bot...if they did we would ALL be banned.

Nope, if they would instaban everyone they catch botting would get rather fast save. One would just have to test get I banned after doing this? Yes. Get I baned after doing that? Yes. So I stop doing this and that and blizzard has no chace to ban me anymore because they aren't able to detect me.
With the current method they use its extremely hard to figure out on what basis they ban without better organisatin on the botter comunity. Some botters will even buy new accounts because there are still alot who report playing 24/7 without a ban.

 

[Ominub]

Also,
Do not buy and Resale in the AH a lot. Only buy what your going to use and sell what you don't need. They do flag accounts that buy items just to resell them for quick profit.

Yep, I agree with you in all points excepting this one. This is not against the blizz rules at all. I have many many friends who do use this kind of trading since beginning and never have been banned. So if blizz flags accs with this activity, there will be very nice group of accounts doing this activity. I think almost everyone use this method. Players should be able to trade a lot in the game. When not, why did they create such a game with AH and RMAH which brings them additive real money?

 

[qztr]

I am not 100% accurate but I am pretty sure this will keep you safe...Its worked wonders for me

Then please explain this.
When I botted Sarkoth I were trading 10m+items per day from my bot account to my main account.
Why haven't I been banned?

I'm constantly fishing the AH for profit resells. I've sold a lot of gold on D2JSP for example, over 300m in total trades. Am I banned? No.

 

[CodenameG]

Your probably right...I interned for a private defense agency; so our investigative techniques might be a little more extreme than blizzards...I just really like this community and after watching swolbyn leave, I finally decided to speak out and see if any of my advice could help.

I would not underestimate Blizzards anti-bot team. They are programmers just like us...and to be a programmer they must be somewhat intelligent. Blizzard has already tried to sue the Buddy team. If they are willing to do that, don't you think they would be willing to research the developers?

heres the thing, its apples and oranges. if blizzard wanted to make things hard for us (software wise) they would of done so, but they implemented warden 2.0 a while back with cata and nothing came from it. instead they decided instead of spending money on programmers who could write better code to deal with bots, they would spend time and money on expensive as fuck lawyers, take a look at rift, they kept tossing so many fucking money wrenches into the works so fast (nightly patches) it was hard for us to keep up, and after a while it was useless for us to do so, as their subscriber base and our user base for Ryftomate when directly to shit. apoc said that h would of come up with a way to get around all that bullshit, but by the time everyone was done it was too late.

blizzard picked their ponies, and unfortunately they dont have cutie marks, and names like rainbow dash, they just have suits, ties, and lots of free time to sue us and anyone else who they want. they picked the lawyers, not the programmers.

 

[DTrick]

I guess if your gonna funnel the gold that the bots collect is to save up as much as you can and maybe like 120million or more then transfer that to a toon that you want to mass sell all the gold at once i noticed lots of 10m selling fast so if u get enough to cover the bot for a new key and extra for profit then you're good. thats how im going to do it from now on.

 

[DTrick]

Then please explain this.
When I botted Sarkoth I were trading 10m+items per day from my bot account to my main account.
Why haven't I been banned?

I'm constantly fishing the AH for profit resells. I've sold a lot of gold on D2JSP for example, over 300m in total trades. Am I banned? No.

i just got raped by blizzard and done well over 300million so it is possible.

Normally i had all my junk selling on the gold AH on the bots when i collected i collected about 20m at a time then sold it on my RMAH account. i got banned when i started selling gold on the RMAH, previously i was doing it blackmarket style.. So i duno i think they may be watching gold sales.

 

[Momak]

omfg theories and theories again. 1st and most important thing is that everything from OP WILL NOT keep you safe. And that's a fact. Because you can trade gold around however you want but they will still see you going same path, killing mobs in a same way 300 times a day. Trading gold is probably last thing they look because as soon as you find 1 superb item you'll get hundred of millions and you'll gonna start trading big around. There's many legit people who trade a lot.

and plz stop with these theories because we've seen sooo many different kind od people who got banned. Those who had 1000h played, those who had 30 minutes played, those who traded and didn't trade on auction house, those who farmed leveling profiles, sarkoth, champions, core, vases, act 2, whatever. Some of them had different IPs, mails, mac adresses, everything, some people had all on 1 PC. Some got all accs banned on 1 PC, some didn't. Some people had their mules banned, most didn't.

Seriously stop trying to make some conclusions because there's no way in hell that you can think of something that will explain all this.

 

[bidder1]

omfg theories and theories again. 1st and most important thing is that everything from OP WILL NOT keep you safe. And that's a fact. Because you can trade gold around however you want but they will still see you going same path, killing mobs in a same way 300 times a day. Trading gold is probably last thing they look because as soon as you find 1 superb item you'll get hundred of millions and you'll gonna start trading big around. There's many legit people who trade a lot.

and plz stop with these theories because we've seen sooo many different kind od people who got banned. Those who had 1000h played, those who had 30 minutes played, those who traded and didn't trade on auction house, those who farmed leveling profiles, sarkoth, champions, core, vases, act 2, whatever. Some of them had different IPs, mails, mac adresses, everything, some people had all on 1 PC. Some got all accs banned on 1 PC, some didn't. Some people had their mules banned, most didn't.

Seriously stop trying to make some conclusions because there's no way in hell that you can think of something that will explain all this.

what he said is atleast a common sense if they were detecting it the way he said it did anywayz nothing to be mad about lol if you dont like others idea or theories just leave them be, they aren't forcing you to read it lol

 

[Kuval]

Although the spirit of this post is great, I find that there is no way this is a grad student for software engineering. This whole thing is pretty much a farce and should probably just be deleted. A software engineer would understand that it doesn't matter if you trade items in a dungeon or in town- if they're tracking trades, they're going to nab you where ever you do it. As for dropping items, they could just as easily track dropped items as an ULTIMATE red flag. They know the stats of all the items in the game- so if they just monitor every time you drop one of the top 20% items on the ground... you're also instantly banned.

Further, the money thing makes no sense. You don't have someone's IP just because they have a paypal account. Maybe you can say Paypal has their IP. I don't know what you're even trying to get at here, it makes no sense.

They are not tracking payments made to demon buddy, because purchasing DB does not mean use of DB... which means they can't punish you for buying DB and telling the world that you have it.

The problem here is that people are looking for an answer... they think one up randomly and then throw some false credentials on it to convince everyone else. You're not a software engineer, and you're not a grad student. Grad students that are prospects for security firms would explain a lot more technical function than "ip tracking" and "item tracking."

These types of posters need to be told to stop, and if they continue- they need to be banned. They lure others into a false sense of security, which could cost accounts.

Please lock this thread.

 

[BadTank]

Deliver,
Great post! I think you made a lot of valid points here that seriously should be taken into consideration. Thank you!

 

[Momak]

what he said is atleast a common sense if they were detecting it the way he said it did anywayz nothing to be mad about lol if you dont like others idea or theories just leave them be, they aren't forcing you to read it lol

not mad or anything, I'm just saying that it's silly to say things like how to stay under a radar and focus only on 1 thing when people are getting banned for so many other things. I mean, if someone's botting 24/7, creating 500 games a day and having same pattern, he's not gonna get saved by going in dungeon and dropping items.

This can possibly only work if you trade around alot or just to keep your main rmah account safer, but really nothing else. From all the info people have gathered it is most possible that they have "banwaves" every week or two when they have intervals when they scan and search mostly for games created and bot behaviours.

 

[Balanced]

Yep, I agree with you in all points excepting this one. This is not against the blizz rules at all. I have many many friends who do use this kind of trading since beginning and never have been banned. So if blizz flags accs with this activity, there will be very nice group of accounts doing this activity. I think almost everyone use this method. Players should be able to trade a lot in the game. When not, why did they create such a game with AH and RMAH which brings them additive real money?

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