Has anyone looked into the concept of login bots and how to prevent that from happening? I have been back a short time but even after my lenghty absence I am smart enough to know that during war 95% of countries can't log in within 25-45 seconds at any time of the day.
Just curios if anyone has given this any thought and what can be done to prevent it? I am not a computer guy so not even sure it is something that can be done. I remember leaving the game with people using bots to generate and run countries so am just curious if a login bot is something that could be made and if so, how can you detect it and what are you willing to do about it once detected.
Thanks for taking the time to teach this old dog new tricks!

SOL uses login bots?

many have smartphones/etc so they can quickly log in to wall even during trip to or back from work and its not that difficult to stay logged in portal and when alert (sms or call) comes then simply clicks play your country-link and then buy troops or turrets and many might have login and pass to ee saved in browser (mobile or computer).

today killing needs to be done in 1 min or risk that tgt gets online grows high.

i thought you were joking when you suggested this to me, norcal.

I've seen a walling script controlled from IRC, but don't know about any actual bots yet

To: h2orich are you that stupid? I am not going to respond with anymore. If you want to talk send me a private message.

Marshal: Thanks for the explanation. Its hard enough for me to login let alone use a smart phone... maybe I should learn. Thanks again. Although I still think being woken up out of a sound sleep getting to your phone and walling in 25 seconds is a bit much to believe when it happens often.

braden: As I said I am not tech savy but I do have common sense. Was just trying to understand how things happen.

elvesrus: what is a walling script controlled from IRC? Explain that a bit more. I am curious if that would be something that could explain my concrns. Again, I don't know so am just asking questions and trying to find out how active the people in charge of the game are. Hopefully they are more active than the last time I played the game.

Thanks to all for your responses. well all except one.
: (

it's easier with certain smart phones than others. Also people have alerts on IRC and scripts to sms their phones the moment they get hit.

norcal: yea, ~5 years ago you could leave country to be killed on next chat hrs later but now if you don't kill country in 1 chat then owner either has come online or gotten fa or both.

There have been bots logging in to get the clan admin info for over a year now so having ones that wall for you as well isn't a stretch. There are also bots in operation allowing one person to wall for another through irc and other mediums. Though tools like rdp work as well but are less secure for the owner.

i don't understand the playing ingame through irc.. i understand a stand alone program reading news faster than i can think and sending off a text message the same moment while doing nine trillion other functions simultaneously, but I'm with norcal on this one..

how does irc chat client run turns in game? buy troops in game? again, i'm with norcal, i'm nowhere close to tech savy, myself.

what might such an.. "interface" look like?

and not to drop names, hints or suggestions, but ya'll wall fairly quick yourselves, sometimes ;)

same incredibly annoying highlight for the last decade (teaches the mind when to wake up immediately)
auto refreshing portal
preset purchases off of private market set and ready to be bought

can usually go from there relatively easily

i'm glad you used relative, because it's still well over my head ;)

So having a bot that walls for other people is considered legal now as long as you only run 1 country, you can baby sit as many as you want?

Doesn't make me believe things are much better than when bots ran multiple countries.

And apparently, those in charge can't or won't do anything about it?

lol

No, bots are disallowed.

Babysitting is also forbidden; there's also significantly less evidence for it.

The issue we're planning to fix first is the admin news bot stuff, which should reduce the advanced warning that some people get.

Thanks! Glad to see something is going to get worked on. When will this fix be ready? Hopefully for next reset.

@elvesrus I sure as hell hope that if you actually saw an IRC walling script that was being used that you reported it to some admins. No clue how that would work but it would be some serious BS.

if it magically did things I would, but as the person using it still has to put in all the commands (login, purchase, etc.) it seems like a gray area that could use some definition.

locket,
If I wanted to accuse someone of something I would. I have been gone for quite awhile and am wondering if some things have changed in the game. It appears that some things have and others haven't.

As far as you getting involved in trying to speak for me perhaps you should become a mind reader! No, that won't work as you don't seem to be doing very well at it.
: )

If would like to talk to me using private messages I will be more than happy to have a conversation with you. If you want to come here and post about your hypothetical accusations at least have the courtesy to be close to being right.

.

This actually doesn't have anything to do with RD/Rival. Think elves is right on target.

Sorry if I hit a nerve with you locket. I know I am not tech savy... so I asked. It is amazing to me that time after time people can react within 25 seconds to 45 seconds. If it was once or twice I could understand that but since it was more I was trying to come up with a reason.

From the responses, all have been pleasant and explaining about smartphones and then some info on a walling script that someone has seen in IRC. I did not realize that smart phones are so smart!

Can I ask you a question? If everyone else is taking this as questions that are being asked and replying with informative answers, why is it you have taken such a personal response to it?

I didn't get mad at someone asking if SOL was using bots, I simply said I wouldn't respond to such a stupid accusation.

What alliance are you in? RD or Rival...

Sorry I have been gone a long time so don't know where you reside.

: )

I will honestly say that most kills that fail on either side are due to an internal issue. If someone is near their computer and a sound goes off it is entirely possible to stonewall within 15 seconds or less if they are actually on it. If they are on a cell then it should be possible within 30 if they check the text right away. Some people spend more time around their tech than others. It does not take a bot to wall repeatedly. It just takes someone with a good phone or lots of access to a computer.

Although if someone in this game hasnt at least tested a bot id be surprised I guess. Hope it isnt happening regularly though.

So do I!

If you read my initial question it was simply asking if it was possible and if so, how could it be detected and what could be done about it. I stated I am not computer savy so was asking if it was possible. I admit that I am totally surprised at the response time people have and never having a smart phone did not realize just how smart they were!

I now know the value of smart phones! So to be quite honest with you, I did not mean to come across that anyone was using them, my question was is it possible that it could be happening. Remember, when I played, it was common practice for certain alliances to run multiple countries and run bots to kill countries. So, from my past experience and being told that security is much better now and people can't run multiple countries, I wanted to ask if there was the technology to use login bots and if so, I hoped that the practice could be stopped.

Thanks for your response and your explanations. Hope that clears things up.

Fair enough then. Your response/post just resembled what I have expected from certain other Sol players, some of which dont have permission to post on here anymore :P I have noticed a few Solers that seem rational enough though. I will edit the posts out I guess. It could be bots but as I said before, in the vast majority of wallers I have been able to chat with them during or shortly after the wall so they are online. I think some people just keep their phones too close and have different priorities than me... which would explain why I never live through close wars :P

I would say there are several different bots currently active in earth though I don't know of any doing automatic walling currently. The problem lies in deciding what gets allowed and what gets stopped.

Its impossible to wall on cell within 20sec. takes 3-4 sec to receive the sms. takes another 15 sec? just to load browser with login save. If you were to blame on internet, i tried LTE. need at least 40sec by that time, country is dead.

page autorefresh + logged in portal = fast walling

hey NorCal. I rly think you can ask Dragon how much time needed to wall. I say you need about 10-15 sec if you are expecting run on your country (i.e. logined and waiting) and about 20-30 sec if you are catched semiunprepared (need to login). Smartphone walling mostly depending on internet connection.

As for the walling part - yes, walling bot is possible and nothing will stop it. Its not hard to write something like chrome plugin, wich will do all work for you:) This all depends on players awareness.

IMO, the walling part needs to be reworked to reflect world changes from 2013. But its long long story, you can join my thread discussion if you want to discuss it.

Using any kind of script to play your country is a violation of the rules. That means if you aren't actually logging in to your country through the web portal and clicking on the various game buttons then technically it's cheating.
We reserve the right to decide what actions to take/if any although anything that gives a player any kind of advantage is much more likely to be responded to. We reserve the right to take any actions we feel is appropriate against the individuals involved which can range from a warning to outright banning from the game.
Obviously this doesn't apply to any kind of script that simply reads the news feed or collects market feeds/data, or things like an sms bot based on an irc news feed.

We normally do not comment on these matters unless it's something really serious.

Also for those of you trying to bypass the game sercurity/trying to use bots to give yourselves an advantage keep in mind that this forces us to spend our time playing security wars rather than developping/changing the game itself.

I have a highlight set for my username or country that when it shows up on the IRC newsfeed plays an audio clip of a Civil Distress Air Raid Siren, being a Cold War kid, there's nothing that will snap your ass wide awake than the sound of something that says nuclear weapons are in bound on your location. :P

Though, I disabled the audio clip recently... and have paid with at least two dead countries... LOL.

an irc bot actually seems very plausible. *shrug* just not sure about it.

It's very possible, actually. Just takes a lot of code, a knowledge of how http works, and a knowledge of what to do in certain situations ( if attack is BR then do this, if GS then do that, etc ).


I have the most popular comment on Cracked.com.

http://www.cracked.com/...-boo-redeemed-reality-tv/

Go down to the comments section, and click on the 'Votes' button, which will sort by votes. The first comment you see is the most popular comment on Cracked.com.

They validated the fact that you had already voted on a comment on the client-side, using javascript. So, I used an old version of mIRC to bash out a quick script that would just sit there and "click" on the up-vote button over and over again (bypassing the javascript). I did this, while at work, via the remote desktop app on my cell phone, connected to my laptop at home over a satellite uplink. About a half hour later, over 3000 up-votes. They fixed that little problem shortly afterwards. I rule.


P.S. The second most popular vote on Cracked.com?

http://www.cracked.com/...ns-criminally-insane.html

Made popular by yours truly.

Cracked.com, huh?

A IRC bot is definitely possible. Back when GamersTown was still around, I wrote a full mIRC script that takes a "!spy 123" command in chat, which then logs into my LaF account if the cookie has expired, and then retrieves the spy op, and summarizes it back into chat in a few lines.

Just takes a couple of hours to read up on how the HTTP headers work, along with receiving and sending cookies. HTTP headers are just plain text.

Unfortunately, it was rather slow to execute due to the amount of HTML parsing needed, I eventually converted the mIRC script into a DLL (wrote that in Visual Basic), which mIRC loads and calls.

Ahh, so you still use it, then? Good to know.

Gamerstown shut down years ago, so it doesn't work anymore. Plus, it was annoying to update the script whenever the spy page's HTML changed slightly.

do we have permission to write bots now? i have a set of 20 year old books about AI that I've been meaning to read. maybe only 10 years old. wonder where i put them...

doesn't technically count because this entire discussion is about using bots. i grab a database and a winsock control. bada bing, bada boom.

what's really neat is that i never had to do a captcha to make a delivered purchase. wonder why they don't make sure that I'm not a bot?

I would be able to write a walling bot relatively easily. I have no desire to do so; however, it wouldn't surprise me if someone has this.