11–20 of 163 posts
Probably the word "hacked" made it click baity, atleast in my opinion. Automation, yes. Not sure there was a vulnerability involved.
A 'neat hack' is the original use of the word hack. Hacking does not at all require the involvement of vulnerabilities.
This is an interesting proof of concept. I'm impressed at how simple the SMS signup code is. For many universities though, it won't be this simple. Many hide the open seats behind a login, which means you need to be a student there to see them. Many also use student information systems that are a real pain to scrape like this. Once you get to the point where interacting with the student information system is done via…
0: We used https://www.charlesproxy.com/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, I haven't read the article but I'm pretty sure hacking is doing something outside its intended purpose.
Agreed, but it's just automation at play here. Clever, and will save time though, just thought that the headline was a little misleading, considering a registration system was involved.
$seats="$(curl $URL | sed \"140qd\" | sed -nE \"s/|//gp\")"
if [ $seats -gt 0 ]; then
echo "Go register for class $URL" | msmtp -a "default" $EMAIL
fiI remember getting SMS's in the middle of the night alerting me that a seat opened up!
If you were able to do that prior to taking CS101, you might not need CS101.
Though at that point you'd have a lot more luck with selenium or some other web driver.
Wondering why you didn't also automate the process of actually signing up for the seat? Getting notified that a seat is open is helpful but automatically taking the open seat sounds a lot more helpful. Though at that point you'd have a lot more luck with selenium or some other web driver.
Probably the word "hacked" made it click baity, atleast in my opinion. Automation, yes. Not sure there was a vulnerability involved.
It's also a bit risky, as some University administrators may not understand that he isn't actually being malicious. Automated scraping can be considered a violation of some IT policies though, so OP should be careful about something like this.
Some other schools in our system are really reactionary, though, and consider any automation a ToS violation and will freak out.
e: And if you know the URL pattern / platform of your Uni's registration system, there's probably already a couple of examples on github of a registration bot.