Working on a bot-proof camper?

Okies.. so I have a freebie camper script, and am working on mdifying it (Cant post it until 3pm or so SLT, as thats when I get home).

Is is possible for a script to turn off other scripts in the object?

Was thinking about making a second script for the camper, that causes it to, when sat upon, ask an easy trivia question. Maybe even just ask their name in a dialog box or something. And if they answer incorrectly, or don't answer at all, then the camping pad doesn't work. No payout at all.

So... hmm.. two methods I can think of. One would be to have that script deactivate the camper script if possible, the other would be to activate the camper script if the answer is given correctly only, so its not really a camper until I want it to be.

Is this possible?

The reason I want to turn the camper script on/off with another is so that I don't have to figure out how to do it and not break the camper script itself..

Any ideas?

You can, with LlSetScriptState. But…

The usual approach is to unsit the avatar, you can do this in your separate quiz script, the existing camping script should see the link count change and do the right thing.

I know how to unsit, but thats not quite what I want. If a bot sits on my camper, and doesn't get anything.. too bad for them y'know? Besides, unsitting a bot won't help all that much since bots often just resit. It would be like a war between my chair and the bot lol...

Maybe I'll use the land abilities to actually ban the av o.o

dont forget eject =)

what i use to make in teen grid a wile back was a champing chair and have it spit out a code every 10 minutes, the people on the chair would have 4 minutes to type it in or they would be unseated from the chair

//-- in globals
list gLstDialog = ["yes", "no", "maybe"];

//-- in a timer
llDialog( -42, llAvatarOnSitTarget(), "are you a bot?", llListRandomize( gLstDialog ) );

in the listen set a boolean for paying the avatar, if the answer is yes, set it to false, kill the timer, and po a dialog telling them that bots don't get payed. if it's maybe repop the dialog =) if it's no continue as normal... don't forget to reset the boolean when they get up.

Thankies all!

MRC< I'm fine with people afkinfg while camping, that doesn't bother me.. its boring to just sit around, y'know?

So I don't want to ask every 10 minutes or anything.. once should be enough. Maybe make a random question pop up, either 'are you a bot' or 'are you a human', and yeah, that way its harder to get the bots working to answer it correctly.

And I think what I'll end up doing is if they answer incorrectly, give them one more chance, some people are silly y'know? And if they answer incorrectly again, unsit, eject, ban... should be pretty foolproof

And thanks Void!

A question.. what is the randomization of the list doing? Jw.. changing the order in the dialog or what? Not sure =/

When I finish my scripts (Going to be making a new, even more customizable camping script in the end as well), Ill post it all here open source, I don't see any reason to sell it when its for fighting bots, not for making my own money...

Thanks all! I'll be banging out a rough prototype tomorrow!

Basically the list randomizing makes sure that the buttons on the dialog are in random order.

This pretty much makes it harder for bots to give the proper answer as they cannot just go and "script" mouse clicks or whatever to push a specific button.

it also adds a layer of complexity for complex bots, since I belive they can get a list of buttons for each dialog through the client, but would als have to parse each button for text....

you could add another level of comlplexity by masking ask a conditional question (randomly exchanging 'real perso' for 'bot', and exchanging the listen logic too...then they'd have to parse the message AND the button text and use comparitive logic.... which means a very custom bot... and if they can do that, odds are they aren't wasting their time on camping

I forgot to add that keeping the dialog on a negative channel is key, since a normal av can't speek on negative channels to bypass it, and always answer "yes" through chat.

Actually I believe all the bot would have to do is say, "no" on the correct channel. I believe it could do it, too. The non-negative channel restriction is more than likely in the client/GUI, not the protocol. In any case, it would be easy enough to design a bot that would cut through any such security, if someone really wanted to.

The best approach to take IMO is to accept the fact that there are bots, which aren't a great deal different from a person who's gone AFK in this case anyway. One person could start up multiple clients, park them all on camping chairs, and be AFK for them all. This is a reality of the camping approach. You want to offer it, you live with the people who want to take advantage of it. The holes on this problem are far too big, too numerous, and probably too rewarding for anyone to be able to patch them. Reinventing your business model would be simpler.

One way to take care of bots:

Have a display set up using xytext, then ask the camper what is written on that display.

unless bots scan the display, recognize the textures and figure out the letters that are being displayed...

This should keep the majority of the bots out.

Yah, Hewee, I figured they could do that with an attachment, which is why instead of just randomizing the answers I figured randomizing the question is better, and such.

Lovely ideas all!

Squirrel, while that would work pretty well, any sort of lag could cause a change in the text board to not get across to the camper if someone is asked right when it changes. Also, unless the area is purely for campers, I don't really want anything like that personally, since my customers would get confused as to why some board on the wall says "Pineapple Sundae" lol

I can't wai to get home now lol.. wanna work out my prototype!

I'll also be going over about 5 different camp scripts I have, to work out exactly how to make my own, and then add on my bells and whistles. (The normal ones, like group only, pay limit, time limit, but some more too, such as sit position, alpha, movement, etc.. yes. Movement. And one interesting Idea is to make one that offsets the sitter 300m, turns invisible, and rotates slowly, kinda giving a scenic view of the sim
Again, thanks all!

an attachment won't work if you filter the listen to only the seated av, you could also have a few different sets of answers to choose from (like yes/no, of course/no way, etc) using all those tricks will drive a bot programmer to look for greener pastures. oh yeah, make sure you clear that listen after a timeout.

Oh yeah.. forgot bout that bit... probably still SOME way to game it, get a bot to somehow speak the right thing on that channel.. iono (Even if negative.. there must be SOME way).

I'm abuot to start on my 'secure camper' script, and yeah.. I'll make a few different prototypes, see which works best, and then work on my full camping script, which will include the security measures.

Thanks again all!

I've been using object attachments in my zone campers since last June and they seem to work out really really well. One thing I found through testing is that the commercially available bots aren't able to 'wear' attachments. I tested mine with a couple of different bots to validate this. One thing to be careful with......when you use an attachment, make sure the attachment validates the position of the wearable object so that only one wearable item can be attached at once. We found that out real damn quick in our first beta tests when we would find campers with items attached to their hands, heads, asses, whatever LOL.

Oki -- if you need an antibot script -- let me know and I will send you one. It asks a question , with a randomized answer, at the beginning of every session and does prevent resits.

CC

a bot can do the same a real avatar/viewer can.

it's a waste fo time to build funny script, witch can be overrided in a few seconds.
i have build a bot from a toturial, it can do anything a real viewer can.


the only protection u can make, is paying a friends to keep an eye on your camping spots.

everthing else can be overrided, easy.

and if u are too restrictive people just stay away.
i also have campers and i turned on antibot 30 min on the campmaster 2.1.
and they left and bye to a higher a traffic rate.
but my bot can easy answer any question (even math, color, texture and learn things by it self), because it was build for that porpuse and it's not for sale, nor wil it be for sale.

a bot is actualy a program that recieves, anylizes and replicates data packets.
it was build with packets sniffers, LL source code and reverse engeneering for the viewers.

it can answer questions, IM, group messages, dialogs, everything.
i don't have to control it, i just log in and the bot travels alone find campings spots and ...

Can your bot read an image?

If yes, you've just wasted a whole lot of time.
If no, don't waste your time. I doubt it's worth it.

Old thread is old. (I started it btw)

Anyhow, your bot CAN'T do everything a normal person can. I promise. Various questions and such are impossible for your bot to answer correctly unless you tell it to answer that way. Period.

If you have a bot that is infallibly correct, no matter what, then you should sell that technology, my friend, because you've created true AI.

Your bot is not infallible. Period. It can be beat.

Have a nice day.

I disagree. Unless you are there manually changing the mark the bot has to reach, you too have effectively created a "bot". Meaning there are two sets of static logic working against each other. All it takes is enough time and effort on one coder's part to beat the other. You setup a script with questions you're SURE a bot can't figure out, and some smart hacker with enough determination is bound to come along and figure out a way to create a bot that can beat your script until you update it again.

It's a vicious circle, and you're almost certain to lose, being only one programmer up against a multitude of potential attackers. The reason for this is that it isn't quite the same as securing a system you have privileged access to to begin with; instead the playing field is SL, where all privileges and authority start on a level playing field.

In computer security there is always the question of whether tackling the problem is worth it. To you, is it worth spending tons of continuing effort to try to shore up a camping system, because there is almost certain to be some poor, bored, and/or egotistical hacker out there who--for some reason--DOES find it worth the time and effort to try to beat your security measures. Camping for some reason has that mystical allure in SL. Don't ask me why.

Oh, I wasn't meaning that my script was unbeatable..mine is rather easy to beat, and haven't touched it in a while.

But it is possibly to create a 'bot proof camper system' that is essentially unbeatable in SL, without hacking a database of questions and answers, or testing and compiling your own database of these questions and having someone go through and answer them all or brute force correct answers and record those correct ones found.

I'm nowhere near good enough to even want to attempt it, but it is possible.

Quite honestly what I didn't like was:


Because that is undoubtedly untrue, and as far as I know hasn't been accomplished by anyone. To do so, it would require true logic, reasoning, math skills, image reading ability, and so on so forth. A simple bot can figure some things out.

A complex bot can figure more things out.

A bot that 'can do anything a real viewer can' is not going to be easy to find, and I doubt someone would release an easy-to-follow tutorial on it, since it'd take far too much programming to try to explain it all in one document (In my opinion)

Anyhow, point is the above statement is untrue. I wasn't meaning my script (Or any other existing single script for that matter) can for sure beat it, I was simply implying that it could be beat, which it can.