For the record, this is how a lot of video game cheats work and it SUCKS. Aimbots in FPS games for example exist 100% out of the game executable so there is no way to stop it. The only option you have as a dev is to detect the behavior and ban with righteous fury.
It's both incredibly cool and wildly frustrating at the same time.
There's a lot of detection that can be done beyond just the behavior. The problem basically reduces to virus detection (and the ensuing arms race). You check all running programs for something that looks like this kind of bot. Right now it's probably easier to just detect the APM or jerky screen view, but in the long run that's the best way to shut these down.
Personally I'm really hoping Blizzard doesn't go after things like this too actively on SC2. It's unfortunate that there's no offline place for bots to play against each other, because the competitions that arise are really fun. There's definitely less money to be made here than in, say, WoW.
Personally I'm really hoping Blizzard doesn't go after things like this too actively on SC2
At a cerebral level, I love to see bots in development for RTS's. Beyond the cool factor, it could wind up developing all sorts of new strategies and spur more high-level discussion. That said, it would really destroy the battle.net experience if bots became prolific.
Ah yeah, I phrased that badly. My intent was to emphasize that the cheat exists solely outside of the game executable. Blizzard runs an incredibly cool, and secretive, program called Warden to do exactly what you said (amongst other things). Details are sparse but my understanding is that every 30 seconds a unique copy is downloaded and run looking for cheats. For small time developers, cough cough, it's a painful problem.
It's both incredibly cool and wildly frustrating at the same time.