[DEVBLOG] Team security - banning bad guys and also bad guys

[Lady Spank]

reported by CCP Sreegs | 2012.03.01 17:22:39 | NEW | Comments

Greetings lovely Internet Spaceship pilots!

Hanging some bots out to dry



Some of you have rather astutely noticed by virtue of reading various shadey forums that we've taken some administrative action against some botters. I'm saving pretty pictures and graphs for Fanfest (I don't have any yet) but I'll say that the total number of accounts actioned against was more than 1000 and less than 2000. I'm actually quite happy that the community cared enough to notice without us having to publish anything about it but I will take a few minutes to explain some things I'm seeing in the various discussions on the topic that are incorrect.

"This is a Publicity Drive for Fanfest" - Back before Fanfest last year we had a group assembled called the EVE Security Task Force. That group was tasked with performing actions like the one recently taken against botters. As a matter of fact that group took action the day prior to Fanfest and continued to do so on a twice-monthly or more basis for many many months. The process is designed that way because I don't believe that security is something you unwrap once every 2 months and pat yourself on the back about. What I said a year ago about the subject remains true today in that I believe it to be a continued process. This will be a slow burn and it will be regular. I do need to add to that the fact that these things were turned off for a period of time. As you are all aware the company has gone through a lot of changes in the recent months. Because of this there was a period of time where nobody had responsibility for handling the technology responsible for nuking botters. As of now there is a formal team on the EVE project devoted entirely to security, of which I am the product owner which is a fancy word for manager. This means that we've now thrown the switch again and turned on the catching bad guys machine because we own it and we don't like cheaters.

"This is nice but it should be something regular" - I agree. It was designed as such and as I stated above it was run for many many moons on a regular basis.

"Three strikes is too weak" - Here we disagree but there's a reason why. I've shown charts before and I'll have a set at Fanfest that shows that we're effective at changing behavior by using these bans (with a caveat). What I mean is that a fraction of people actually get a second warning and the amount of people in all time who have ever hit a third was something ridiculous like 3%. There's some new things though related to this that I'm going to be a good egg and share with you though in a separate paragraph.
So as it stands the old rules are in place:

Strike One - 14 days

Strike Two - 30 days

Strike Three - Perm

BUT WAIT, THERE IS EVEN MORE! From now on, and this current wave is included, characters who receive a warning such as this will have the characters locked to the account. This means that once you've received a warning for botting your character transfer privileges have been revoked in perpetuity. This is to prevent people trying to circumvent the rules by recycling accounts. Yes we know people pointed out this could happen last time around and if you'll remember we said "We'll keep an eye on it and if it becomes a problem we'll deal with it". Here is us dealing with it. We'll probably have to come up with some form of timing solution for the future, but as it stands today it's forever. If you care about your dudes don't to bad things.

This is what's most relevant to you guys today but there's some things on the horizon I think you'll also be interested in. One of these is the security team's focus on RMT as well, which will likely be the subject of a future blog (probably after Fanfest) and will help answer that other question about whether or not we actually take away terrible people's assets when they do bad things. I'll keep an eye on this topic for a while to answer any questions. On another note I was just talking to CCP Soundwave and he wanted me to pass the message that any Fanfest attendees who are Japanophiles like himself should come and have a chat about your favorite movies. He doesn't get much of a chance to practice his Japanese here in Iceland.

Don't do anything bad today,

-Sreegs

Yes.

[Shin_getter]

When I think about it, the best way ccp can detect those bots is to simply buy a copy for themselves and reverse engineer to find weaknesses. It takes either pretty damn perfect simulation of human behavior with no signatures or a closed project (thus relatively low impact) to work for long periods of time. Maybe the war on bots can be won after all.....

[Lorkin Desal]

I approve of this thread.

[Lilan kahn]

sorry the first real ai is already deployed running a 400k account bot network in eve, while the rest of ponyrea is looking to take over the world

[Grarr Dexx]

When I think about it, the best way ccp can detect those bots is to simply buy a copy for themselves and reverse engineer to find weaknesses. It takes either pretty damn perfect simulation of human behavior with no signatures or a closed project (thus relatively low impact) to work for long periods of time. Maybe the war on bots can be won after all.....

It's not that simple. A lot of these bots have a very randomized 'human like' algorithm that doesn't have specific timing and points to push buttons and such, which is generally the way to identify botters.

[Daneel Trevize]

your character transfer privileges have been revoked in perpetuity

Love it

Related thread http://failheap-challenge.com/showth...612#post385612

[StevieTopSiders]

The character locking is key; I'm glad they've tackled this issue.

[Freejax]

CCP Employees should just play the game themselves, and convo random players ingame, asking them: Are you a real person?

If: Yes I am. The account can be lest alone.
If: Brrqqqzzzzt.. A bot has been found.........


When CCP keeps this up for about 3 months, they should be able to claim that botting isn't taking place, no bots have been found for months......

[Grideris]

I approve of this dev blog and it's repercussions for any botters out there that just got banned.

[cheeba]

Locking toons in place is a sweet change. That will really fuck up some people.

Prices rises across the board here we come!

[Alistair]

/support for CCP on this. Character locking is a good addition for banned bot-accounts.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Supposedly Jita trading has become much easier for non-bots, with orders filling even several hours after updating.

Expect much less liquidity in the markets if they keep banning.

[Daneel Trevize]

Prices rises across the board here we come!

Plex cost reduction here we come...

[notbitterenough]

This is some good shit!

[noobcake]

good policy. But even with character locking, I still think 3-strikes-and-you're-out policies should be one-and-done...

[Jack Coutu]

Prices rises across the board here we come!

Plex cost reduction here we come...

Yes finally.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

good policy. But even with character locking, I still think 3-strikes-and-you're-out policies should be one-and-done...

The data seems to be against you~

3% go on to get the third ban, and the number giving up their characters after the first is also rather low.

[Snake]

/me buys trit.

[Zeekar]

¸repost

[depili]

1-2k accounts doesn't feel like a major dent to bots, as they at least feel much more common than that, that would be at max 0.5% of all account if the 400k figure flying around is accurate.

The locking of characters is quite elegant solution to prevent recycling of botting toons and I suppose that flagged accounts get more scrutiny in the future also. While the catch-you-once and out permanently might sound like a good idea I think with CCP's track record of also catching innocents once in a while it's good that the first possible missidentification doesn't lead to permanent bans. But that policy should also have room for per-account exceptions, like that if you get caught running 10+ bots then you deserve to DIAF.