Cracking online examinations made easy

Posted by Arun

October 20, 2008

Scenario

We often take online courses as part of the company’s mandatory courses, certifications and due to many other reasons. Most of these courses also have an assessment to be completed at the end in order to earn the credits.

Do you know that we can get the answers for these assessments right from our system?

Fact

Most of the times (not always), online courses are designed in Flash and using scripting languages like Java or VB script.

How to get the answers?

Clear all the Temporary Internet Files
Refresh the browser window where questions are being served
Go back to the temporary internet files folder. You will now only see the files which are only related to the current browser which is refreshed.
Search for the script files. All the script files will look like this. .The important thing is to search for the relevant script file. You may want to check the script file name. In my case, I found the script file with the name ‘Questions’.
Open the file with a Notepad or any other editor like Ultra Edit.
You should be able to see the questions and also the answers for those questions.

Assume this is the question

Given the company’s policy on public communications, how would you handle a request for an interview from a reporter for an investment strategy magazine?

Screenshot

Please select the best answer.

Speak with the reporter and respond accurately and truthfully to any questions.
Refer the reporter to the Director of your department.
Refer the reporter to the XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Public Relations department.
Speak with the reporter with the understanding that any comments will need to be approved by the XXXXXXXXXXXXX Public Relations department.

Here is the answer

Refer to the highlighted part of the image. The box in RED has the correct answer for the question among all the other options available. At the end of the highlighted box, there is a word TRUE, indicating that’s the correct answer. The other options have FALSE.

Likewise, you can get answers for all the questions!

Caveats

This will work only when the script where the answers are stored, is not protected.
This is applicable only in the scenario mentioned on the top of post and not in other scenarios.