Online game bot detection based on party-play log analysis

  • Ah Reum Kang
  • , Jiyoung Woo
  • , Juyong Park
  • , Huy Kang Kim*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    As online games become popular and the boundary between virtual and real economies blurs, cheating in games has proliferated in volume and method. In this paper, we propose a framework for user behavior analysis for bot detection in online games. Specifically, we focus on party play which reflects the social activities among gamers: in a Massively Multi-user Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), party play is a major activity that game bots exploit to keep their characters safe and facilitate the acquisition of cyber assets in a fashion very different from that of normal humans. Through a comprehensive statistical analysis of user behaviors in game activity logs, we establish threshold levels for the activities that allow us to identify game bots. Based on this, we also build a knowledge base of detection rules, which are generic. We apply our rule reasoner to AION, a popular online game serviced by NCsoft, Inc., a leading online game company based in Korea.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1384-1395
    Number of pages12
    JournalComputers and Mathematics with Applications
    Volume65
    Issue number9
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2013 May

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This research was supported by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Korea , under the “ITRC” support program supervised by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency ( NIPA-2011-C1090-1001-0004 ).

    Keywords

    • Game bot
    • MMORPG
    • Online game security
    • User behavior analysis

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Modelling and Simulation
    • Computational Theory and Mathematics
    • Computational Mathematics

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