How can I detect artificial mouse movements?

Question

We wrote a game in which you shoot a target as fast as you can, and someone wrote a program to automatically shoot targets (via simulated mouse / click movement).

How can I detect this? I thought about controlling mouse speed, etc., but it seems too easy to get around. If this helps, the game runs on Windows / is written in C ++. Is it not easy to say that movement does not come from hardware?

Answer 1

See How to determine if a mouse click is legal or automated? In fact, this suggests that it is impossible to do it reliably, due to several reasons, one of which is that the programmer will find a way around all that you are trying to do.

As suggested, heuristic seems to be a viable option. Control variable mouse speed, skipping speed and accuracy, pauses, sudden jumps, etc. The higher the heuristic, the more the programmer will have to make his bot closer to the real player, and the less successful he will get.

PS: Even for well-known shooter games such as Counter Strike, there are hacks that completely remove for you, so they don’t understand how / I don’t want to stop it.