Games like World of Warcraft now install spyware on your computer whose purpose is to try and catch the kinds of programs the guy used in the article.

If I were going to do this, I'd try and find a way to run the games in a virtual machines and have my hack software run outside it. Since that software would be free to generate arbitrary memory and i/o state changes, I can't see that the spyware approach will really work for long.

Trying to guard against the general menace of "bots" is a failed endeavor from the very beginning; it is not the bots themselves that trouble the other players, but rather their behavior. Thus, I would think the best approach would simply be a Bayesian analysis at the server level of all inputs into the game (at a slightly higher level than just "right, up, up, TAB"). Indeed, the end result of the proceeding arms race would be to create bots so human that other players would be untroubled by them.

I remember running autominers in RuneScape that would automatically move your mouse and click - but I had no idea people were doing stuff like this. Pretty cool.