This guide for grabbing and avoiding pits will help you seize the last chance of "Double Eleven"
Our reporter Chen Xi
The "Double Eleven" front is getting longer and longer. Starting from 0:00 on November 1 this year, major e-commerce promotions have already begun.
It is understood that on the first day of the event, nearly 100 million users poured into Taobao to place orders.
As the date approaches the "Double Eleven" day, the battlefield of various spike discounts is everywhere, and many large discount products are instantly "lost".
For some popular, limited-sale products, or low-priced products in the live broadcast of Internet celebrities, "one piece is hard to find" is the norm for most consumers.
As a result, under the dual factors of low prices and limited quantities, a full-time "snap shot" industrial chain has also emerged.
When you open the web search, you can see various plug-ins or apps that are known as "snatching artifacts". The prices range from free to several hundred yuan, without exception, advertised as "safe" and "easy to use."
The success rate is as high as 95%, it is easy to get started, and there is no risk of account leakage... Is the plug-in software called "snapshot artifact" really so magical?
In the face of thousands of competitors, what determines the speed of our "hands"?
For this reason, a reporter from Science and Technology Daily interviewed relevant experts to explain what happened behind the snap-shopping.
In addition to hand speed and hardware, you need a bit of luck if you want to grab a shot.
“Shopping on an e-commerce platform has many links that determine the success or failure of a snap shot. Which link is delayed will lead to the final loss.” Zhao Laiping, associate professor of the Department of Intelligence and Computing at Tianjin University, said. After the snap shot was opened, did the user act like "click to buy" the first time.
The second is whether the equipment used in the snap shot is powerful.
"It mainly depends on the hardware performance of the computer or mobile phone. The focus is on the working frequency of the central processing unit (CPU) and the size of the hardware memory. The better the hardware performance, the faster the data processing speed, and the response speed after receiving the grab command The faster. In addition, the software running needs to take up memory. If too many software is opened at the same time, or too many programs are running in the background, the processing speed of the device will be affected accordingly when the memory is limited." Zhao Laiping said .
The network is equivalent to a highway for data transmission. Once the client sends a request, the smoothness of the network determines whether the data command can be sent to the server at a fast enough speed.
"General household broadband is connected to the operator's backbone network through the optical modem port. The higher the bandwidth, the stronger the data transmission capacity that can be supported." Zhao Laiping pointed out that general household broadband will be connected to multiple access terminals, such as mobile phones. , Computers, smart TVs, etc., if you surf the Internet at the same time, it will occupy bandwidth and affect the network data transmission speed.
If we can achieve the best conditions in the above steps, does it mean that we will be successful in the shoot?
"This is not necessarily true, because even if the data commands can be transmitted quickly, the final result depends on the processing speed of the server. If you want to'run' on the server to beat others, you may need some luck." Zhao Laiping introduced, like E-commerce platforms like Taobao have more than a dozen data centers across the country.
When the background receives a request from multiple people, it will be distributed to each node server for processing.
Each node server will be processed according to the principle of "first come, first come".
However, the processing speed of each node server is not exactly the same. This is because the efficiency of the node server is not consistent, resulting in the speed of data feedback back to the backstage is also fast or slow, just like we line up in the cafeteria for meals, integrating multiple teams Judging from it, there will always be situations where "coming early" is not as good as "standing cleverly".
"Sometimes we may find that the purchase button is stuck during the snap shot, and there is no response when I click it. When the button returns to normal, the goods have been robbed long ago. This is because there are too many concurrent commands that exceed the background. The upper limit of the processing capacity." Zhao Laiping said, for example, the background concurrent support capacity is up to 1000 requests. When there are 1001 concurrent accesses, the browser of the 1001st person will not receive the service response, so it has been waiting. status.
Various software cheating tricks can be automatically filled and multiple instructions can be sent at the same time
Knowing all aspects of the snap shot process, we can help to improve hand speed, optimize hardware, and speed up the network speed. However, in the face of "grab shot artifacts", these efforts seem to be futile.
"Snapshot artifact" is actually a plug-in software or software plug-in, as long as the personal account information is filled in the software in advance, and then the software will take over all subsequent operations.
"Installing the'grabbing artifact' is equivalent to having an cyborg to help you grab the shots." Zhao Laiping said, in the hand-speed link, humans are not its opponents at all.
What we people snap shots rely on neural response, through the cooperation of human eyes and hands to complete.
In the same operation, the reaction speed of the machine is much faster than that of the human.
Just enter the time to start running in the snap shot software, select the snap purchase activity you want to participate in, and the snap shot software can run automatically.
At the same time, this cyborg can also shorten the order process.
The purchase order process usually contains many steps. For example, after clicking the purchase, the background will enter the shopping cart operation, and then pay. After the payment is completed, click to the payment page to confirm.
"Each snapping operation is actually composed of multiple sub-operations." Zhao Laiping said that the speed of manually inputting various information is obviously very slow.
This plug-in software has the function of automatically interpreting the validity of the data. As long as the data that needs to be filled in is pre-entered, the software can directly and intelligently identify the text corresponding to each option, and copy and paste it automatically at one time, instead of step by step to complete the items. .
In this process, some plug-in software can crack the encrypted ordering protocol of each e-commerce platform, directly bypass the image verification code security identification strategy, and use methods such as IP replacement and forged device numbers to further bypass the machine identification and identification of the e-commerce system. Protection, sending tasks directly to the server of the e-commerce platform.
"In addition, every time we place an order request, it may be forwarded to a busy node in the background, or a data center node that is physically far away." Zhao Laiping explained that the plug-in software can send multiple requests at the same time on the client side. , Which is equivalent to simulating multiple people submitting operations to the background together, and queuing to different nodes at the same time, so that the probability of grabbing the goods will greatly increase.
Possibly leakage of private information. Use "grabbing artifacts" to pay attention
"The success rate of grab shooting software is definitely higher than that of people, but the quality of different'snap shooting artifacts' are also uneven, and the success rate of grab shooting is also different." Zhao Laiping explained that the code written by software is more efficient and the same hardware Under the conditions, the execution speed is faster.
If many people use the "snapshot artifact" to place orders at the same time, and the quantity of goods is limited, it is very likely that the "snapshot artifact" may not be able to get the goods.
In addition, Zhao Laiping also reminded that the use of snap shot software will face the risk of data privacy leakage.
Previously, there have been many cases of data leaks caused by downloading grabbing software from unknown sources.
"Because plug-in software is generally not an official source, in the process of use, you need to fill in the data on the plug-in software, it can help you realize the automatic filling function of the form (the part of the webpage that is mainly responsible for data collection). If the developer of the plug-in software If you have ulterior motives, you can take the opportunity to collect personal data and then resell it or use it for some illegal behavior.” Zhao Laiping said, “This unofficial software that has not been audited is likely to be infected with a virus. We install it to On the computer, it is very possible to steal more information from us and cause greater losses."
Previously, there were media reports that some criminals bundled the robbing software with "Alipay hijacking Trojan horse", or directly disguised the Trojan horse program as robbing software, and tempted users to click to download the virus Trojan horse with promotional content such as "free spike and rapid spike" The bundled installation package caused the user's computer to be poisoned, and was later implanted with a remote control and Internet banking hacking virus, which eventually caused the bank card information to be leaked and the funds in the card were stolen by criminals.
It is understood that, in order to prevent rush-shopping software from undermining the fairness of transactions, many e-commerce platforms have adopted various technical means such as keyword review and big data investigation to "anti-snatching."
A senior security operation expert from the Alibaba Security Department said that before the shopping festival, the technical department has strengthened its attention to abnormal traffic. "Because the traffic used by the software is much higher than the normal traffic, its IP address is also different from normal. Users are different." Through continuous monitoring and analysis, once they identify which accounts are using the snap shot software, the technicians will immediately cut off the operation. Accounts with too many illegal operations may be blocked by the platform.