The Obsession with Finding a Flaw: How It All Started

My fascination with identifying flaws in systems began during my post-UTME examination. It was a computer-based test, and the school ran it on a local server. Initially, I concluded that the exam system was powered by PHP and MySQL, and as a PHP developer, this realization made me feel a bit ahead of the curve. There’s that moment when you recognize something that others might miss, and it gives you a sense of superiority—almost like you’re the only one in the room who understands what’s going on.

However, there was one detail that puzzled me: unlike typical local server setups, where the directory would be something like “localhost/filename,” the school’s server directories were named with seemingly random alphanumeric strings. I recall seeing something like “localhost/v323ev4dv,” which didn’t fit the usual pattern I was accustomed to. This departure from what I knew about XAMPP servers threw me off—there was something more complex happening than I had anticipated.

Despite my surprise, I quickly formed a theory based on a few key observations:

1. No Wi-Fi or Internet Connections:
   Typically, a computer-based test requires an internet connection for data retrieval. However, there was no sign of this. We were simply instructed to log in and begin the exam. This led me to conclude that the entire exam system was being run locally on the school’s network.

2. Loading Speed:
   Once logged in, the system loaded my information almost instantly, which further confirmed my theory. If the system were pulling data from a remote server, there would likely be some lag, especially with multiple users accessing the same resources. The speed was consistent with what you would expect from a local server—almost no delay, suggesting everything was being processed on the same network.

3. Directory Naming Convention:
   The unusual naming of the server directory (like “v323ev4dv”) seemed to serve one of two purposes: either to obfuscate the server structure or to make it look more complex than it really was. It may have been a tactic to discourage anyone from easily figuring out how the system was set up, or there could have been something more intricate happening in the background that I didn’t fully comprehend at the time.

While I may not be entirely accurate in my analysis, these observations motivated me to dig deeper into how the system worked. The possibility of being wrong only fueled my curiosity further, and I felt compelled to learn more about the architecture behind the exam system.

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