I hope you guys have been doing well, staying safe & taking care of your health. It has been some time since I have written my previous article. I didn’t start writing a new one as I haven’t found anything worth writing about and I didn’t want to bore you guys with lame articles, the pandemic has been doing that job well enough I suppose.

Currently, I have been working on writing scripts on top of scripts to ease my work and give me time to look into things that actually matter. There are times when I just find myself repeating the work that I did yesterday, the day before that, and the day before that. The first thing about the hacker mindset is “never re-invent the wheel” and that line alone has pushed me to be so productive. Well then, let us cut to the chase and start cracking the online exam.

Let’s dig in!

So, the reason for writing this article was to find a methodology that helps people cheat on exams that they are given from home. This article is supposed to be a “non-technical hack” to get past the security checks that most of the online examination guidelines ask the student to adhere to. Tons of students have been reaching out to me as to how to stay within these guidelines and still be able to cheat on the exam.

Full disclosure I hate cheating on exams or any other platform, I never cheated on an exam after I passed class 9th. Cheating on exams disgusts me but the only thing this world taught me is “Don’t expect life to be fair to you!”.

I guess the line from The Dark Knight wasn’t that far away from the truth after all.

Let’s talk about the actual hack and how to carry it out.

The theory behind it…

So, recently I have been contacted by students regarding how to bypass the security checks of their online examination. This was because of another article that I wrote earlier, How I hacked my online exam portal and gave exams from home?

When they started asking me for help I began inquiring them about the way their exams were being conducted. Some of them reported that the exam is browser-based, the examiners have access to their cameras and are very vigilant if they try to do something mischievous. Others told me that they had to download certain apps on their computers and take exams via those apps. The people who had to download the apps on their laptops reported that very strict monitoring was taking place for them, as the app tend to close all other open applications. So they can’t use options like TeamViewer or other options like those.

After talking to all of them, I realized that no matter if they are taking the exam on their browser or via the app. These apps and browser-based tests are only looking for software, websites, or apps open in the background but the one thing they can’t check for is “the hardware changes”. What I mean by this is, that managing and monitoring the software-based changes is easy, ask the student or anyone who is giving the exam, for certain privileges to see what kind of software is being run on the machine. The problem arises when they don’t check for something as trivial as a dual screen.

If these examination apps can’t check or better yet don’t check for things like dual screen then this is something we can take advantage of. The idea I proposed to one of the students was to attach a monitor to their laptop and replicate the output of the laptop on that monitor.

Replicating laptop screen on another display!

In this way anyone else can sit in front of the other screen and take photos, have multiple people sit there as a team, or do whatever they want. While the actual student can be in front of the camera and give the exam the normal way, acting as if nothing suspicious is going on. Simultaneously a team of people could solve the problems sitting in front of the other screen or just take pictures and send them to someone else who can solve the question for them.

All you need is a HDMI / VGA cable connected to your laptop and an external display connected to the other end of the HDMI / VGA cable. If you have new-generation laptops, then you might even require a Type C to HDMI / VGA converter.

This technique should work in nearly all the conditions and that is what makes it worth posting. I hope online examinations take this into account as well from now on so that they can prevent students from cheating this way.

Well, I just wanted to write this article as an outburst and to pass some time helping out my friends who are developing the skills that actually matter rather than parroting the stuff being taught at school. Students “Do the things you love, not what others tell you to do”. One of the best statements I heard that resonated with me was “Love the work you do and you never have to work again in your life.”