Can a website detect when you are using Selenium with chromedriver?

Basically, the way the Selenium detection works, is that they test for predefined JavaScript variables which appear when running with Selenium. The bot detection scripts usually look anything containing word “selenium” / “webdriver” in any of the variables (on window object), and also document variables called $cdc_ and $wdc_. Of course, all of this depends on which browser you are on. All the different browsers expose different things.

For me, I used Chrome, so, all that I had to do was to ensure that $cdc_ didn’t exist anymore as a document variable, and voilà (download chromedriver source code, modify chromedriver and re-compile $cdc_ under different name.)

This is the function I modified in chromedriver:

File call_function.js:

function getPageCache(opt_doc) {
  var doc = opt_doc || document;
  //var key = '$cdc_asdjflasutopfhvcZLmcfl_';
  var key = 'randomblabla_';
  if (!(key in doc))
    doc[key] = new Cache();
  return doc[key];
}

(Note the comment. All I did I turned $cdc_ to randomblabla_.)

Here is pseudocode which demonstrates some of the techniques that bot networks might use:

runBotDetection = function () {
    var documentDetectionKeys = [
        "__webdriver_evaluate",
        "__selenium_evaluate",
        "__webdriver_script_function",
        "__webdriver_script_func",
        "__webdriver_script_fn",
        "__fxdriver_evaluate",
        "__driver_unwrapped",
        "__webdriver_unwrapped",
        "__driver_evaluate",
        "__selenium_unwrapped",
        "__fxdriver_unwrapped",
    ];

    var windowDetectionKeys = [
        "_phantom",
        "__nightmare",
        "_selenium",
        "callPhantom",
        "callSelenium",
        "_Selenium_IDE_Recorder",
    ];

    for (const windowDetectionKey in windowDetectionKeys) {
        const windowDetectionKeyValue = windowDetectionKeys[windowDetectionKey];
        if (window[windowDetectionKeyValue]) {
            return true;
        }
    };
    for (const documentDetectionKey in documentDetectionKeys) {
        const documentDetectionKeyValue = documentDetectionKeys[documentDetectionKey];
        if (window['document'][documentDetectionKeyValue]) {
            return true;
        }
    };

    for (const documentKey in window['document']) {
        if (documentKey.match(/\$[a-z]dc_/) && window['document'][documentKey]['cache_']) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    if (window['external'] && window['external'].toString() && (window['external'].toString()['indexOf']('Sequentum') != -1)) return true;

    if (window['document']['documentElement']['getAttribute']('selenium')) return true;
    if (window['document']['documentElement']['getAttribute']('webdriver')) return true;
    if (window['document']['documentElement']['getAttribute']('driver')) return true;

    return false;
};

According to user szx, it is also possible to simply open chromedriver.exe in a hex editor, and just do the replacement manually, without actually doing any compiling.