How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#21

Post by coleca » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 3:52 PM UTC

rasmi wrote: post #8

anirudt wrote: post #2

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.

I've seen where it could also be seen as a violation of the academic honor code. Georgia Tech has some serious warnings about trying this sort of stuff.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#22

Post by TheGRS » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 3:58 PM UTC

agentd00nut wrote: post #18

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.

I wondered that too until I realized it was the Twilio blog, so they would need the use case to fit their particular service.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#23

Post by ardacinar » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 3:59 PM UTC

I remember a classmate of mine doing the exact same 'hack' and distributed it to the whole school (Well, it was posted on school's major Facebook group with 10k-ish members) but it didn't have the SMS bit (It notified you via E-Mail, AFAIK).

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#24

Post by kernelmachine » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

I tried building a similar service at my university when I was in undergrad, and it led to lots of administrative conflicts, because people using my service were thought to have an unfair advantage in the registration process.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#25

Post by makr99 » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did -

The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are now 'open' ". They will close the application intake when they have reached X number of applicants. So timing is very important.

So I hacked up a script which diffs their home page every 10 minutes for "open" regex. When there is an "open" keyword in the diff, the python script calls twilio API to make a phone call to me along with an SMS.

So this script was running in AWS for many weeks and one day I got the call. Logged in to Saskatchewan's immigration homepage and applied. Now I am in Canada as a permanent resident. Thanks to Twilio.

edit: add H1B to make clear which type of immigration is broken IMO.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#26

Post by imron » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

Now just figure out a way to sell the whole solution back to the university, and you'll have paid for your tuition fees.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#27

Post by artursapek » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

I've done a similar thing with Southwest Airline's check-in. They let people get seated based on the order in which they check in for their flight. So right before the 24 hour period began I would run a script that tried to check me in repeatedly until it succeeded. Usually got really good seats.

EDIT: to those asking for the source, it was just a bash script that I have probably lost. The GitHub linked in this subthread looks a lot better than what I had.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#28

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

agentd00nut wrote: post #18

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.

Would you rather fail to register for an open seat or fail to find an open seat? Maybe I'm biased because I made the same choice as an undergrad, I stopped short of registering for the class automatically.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#29

Post by saagarjha » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

imron wrote: post #26

Now just figure out a way to sell the whole solution back to the university, and you'll have paid for your tuition fees.

Sounds like the quickest way to get a call from the university's IT department…

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#30

Post by gregorymichael » Fri, Jun 23, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

makr99 wrote: post #25

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

Greg from Twilio here. Congrats on your immigration! Glad we could play a small part in that journey, but credit goes to you for your courage and creativity. Would love to hear more of your story. Would you mind dropping me a note at gb@twilio.com?