For myself, I can do research software but I’m not very well versed in networking software. Is there a link for the source to your advertising subterfuge bot?
I once thought about building something like that. Selenium for python seems like it could be a good tool for the job http://selenium-python.readthedocs.org/en/latest/getting-started.html Maybe the forum would like to build something, I would definitely put some work in for that.
As far as stuff that's already been made I'm not finding anything after a quick google search.
Maybe we can get @wendell to share his, or maybe give us some ideas on where to start.
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Given what I need to delve into to operate securely and actually learn about computer security I desperately need something like this. Because HOW DARE I look into a-o- and system hardening. Especially when I need my system to keep various keys to software private.
I'd like something like this as well. I didn't see anything out there already. Even if it's broken and doesn't work well, as long as it generates data it will mess with analytics.
How does one invoke/summon/call @wendell? Do we need 5 GPU's, 2 Xeons, and crushed remnants of Macs in the shape of Dawson Ritchie?
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But we also need to be stealthy when doing this, because we want it to look like a human being. Back when I used to write web scrapers, I always made it so there were random delays between requesting the next page, to simulate a person reading the page, before finding the next link to click on. I would also set the referer and user agent, but Selenium would handle that stuff for you since it's just a programmable browser.
What other techniques could we use to make it stealthy?
iirc they track mouse movements to judge things like that. We might have to spoof that as well. I've started a new project, I'll see if I can come up with something.
Granted, how does one do this without hijacking the actual mouse?
Isn't it just going to be a bot that automatically searches things on the internet?
I'm not entirely sure how it works tbh. I assume that it doesn't hijack the mouse, but I am having trouble getting the code that sends the mouse movements to work correctly at the moment, so I can't try just yet.
Yes essentially it would be just searching the internet. The interesting part would be to make it look like a person was actually searching the internet. Wendell's had google thinking that he was an old woman living in Alaska or something lol.
I'd imagine google is smart enough to avoid the bot that searches for S&M gear and toys all day though right?
Yeah, that's the part I'm not sure about though. I wonder how much screening they do to try and determine if something is a bot.
From the approach that a efficient filtering algorithm, I'd be checking a sensical browser ID, clicking main search results, and the further down a link is the longer it'll take to be clicked. I wouldn't track mouse movements if I were google, but I would it I were a networking site like FB or linked in.
I might also think of having related subject matter according to typical related subjects in what websites link between each other, but that starts to be overburdensome.
Hmmm, could make it click FB like buttons every rand(0..3) times it sees one. But yea I wonder how much effort they would put into bot screening.
The other thing I was thinking about was how to make it do subterfuge for you? Is coming from the same IP enough? Can you copy in you cookies and LSOs? Should you make you bot log into Facebook/Google?
Also, who are we trying to deceive here? I would say Google and Facebook for start.
With facewall, it automatically links like topics together, so something like random would be good enough. But that should still not click every like, so maybe rand(.5..10) and anything over 3 is not clicked?
Which episode was it?
Oh, I think it was mentioned last summer?