'''DyKnow Vision''' is proprietary classroom software made by Dynamic Knowledge Transfer, LLC and used by the [[College of Engineering]] at Virginia Tech. It is mostly written in C# but has many native components and cannot be run with [[Mono]]. Attempts to run it under [[w:Wine (software)|Wine]] have been unsuccessful. Both DyKnow Vision and DyKnow Monitor, which comes bundled with DyKnow Vision, includes are known to contain malware-style features such as application and URL blocking, allowing for remote opening screen capture and closing of programs and displays of student screensforced full-screen.

==Malware Features==OccasionallyDyKnow Monitor, professors have enabled the malware features of DyKnow products which comes bundled in class, forcing full-screen mode and spying on students. More specific information regarding this would be informative. In earlier some versions of DyKnowVision, certain key combinations could easily break the forced fullincludes malware-screen mode. Unless students give consent to have their privacy invaded by merely showing up to class style features such as application and running required softwareURL blocking, the malware functionality breaks the remote opening and closing of programs and displays of student screens.<ref>[http://www.vtdyknow.educom/aboutwp-content/acceptable-useuploads/2011/05/monitor54.pdf]</ref> DyKnow Monitor can be prevented from installing by editing the MSI to set a DONT_INSTALL_MONITOR flag.html In the current version of DyKnow provided by Virginia Tech Acceptable Use Policy], but to datethe DONT_INSTALL_MONITOR flag is set by default. However, DyKnow Vision retains many malware features, this hasn't seem to have garnered any attentionsuch as forced full-screen mode and remote screen-capture.

Occasionally, professors have enabled the malware features of DyKnow Vision in class, forcing full-screen mode and spying on students through the remote screen-capture functionality. In earlier versions of DyKnow, certain key combinations could easily break this forced full-screen mode. More specific information regarding this would be informative. Unless students give consent to have their privacy invaded by merely showing up to class and running required software, the malware functionality breaks the [http://www.vt.edu/about/acceptable-use.html Virginia Tech Acceptable Use Policy], but to date, this hasn't seem to have garnered any attention. ==Running the Proprietary Software=====Virtual Machines===

===Making the Installer Skip Dependencies===The web-based dependency installer is broken under wine, but if you trick it into skipping dependencies, you can at least get DyKnow Vision installed. To do so , you'll need to run the DyKnow installer with Wine then delete the dependency entries from a temporary folder in <code>c:\windows</code>.

==Security==In the spring of 2009, the [http[gp://www.security.vt.edu/ IT Security Office|IT Security Office]] and DyKnow were alerted that the login process was unsafe. Passwords are sent by DyKnow over the wire as an [[w:MD5|MD5 hash]] with a static [[w:Salt (cryptography)|salt]] and symmetrically encrypted with [[w:Advanced Encryption Standar|AES]]. While the salted MD5 hash is invulnerable to standard [[w:Rainbow table|precomputation attacks]], the symmetric encryption was performed with key information shared between all clients, allowing for simple decryption if the traffic can be intercepted. Within a month of notification, the issue was worked around at Virginia Tech. Users were instructed to enable SSL for transactions and unencrypted access to the server was shut off. No response from DyKnow on this issue is known of.

DyKnow 5.7 installed a hardcoded root certificate on student computers, allowing traffic to be intercepted in attacks similar to the Superfish vulnerability. SWAT has provided a [https://swat.eng.vt.edu/expanded-information-regarding-dyknow-57-vulnerability remediation tool] to remove the certificate and proxy features of DyKnow. ==File Format==The .dyz file format is a gzipped XML file. After decompressing the file, it can easily be parsed using any standard XML library; pen strokes are stored as base64-encoded binary strings that are provided by the Microsoft Ink library. The DyKnow format also has support for storing complete file history, including erased, resized, and moved pen strokes as well as other deleted or changed elements.<ref>[https://code.google.com/p/dyknow-panel-extractor/wiki/DPXReader]</ref> ==Patents==

*[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=0AC6AAAAEBAJ US 7508354] ==References==<references/>

==External Links==

* [[gp:Learning Technologies#Online Course Systems|Online Course Systems]] [http://www.edtech.vt.edu/ocs/dyknow/index.shtml DyKnow support page]* [http://www.dyknow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/DyKnow-Step-by-Step-Guide-Full.pdf DyKnow Step-by-Step Guide]* [https://code.google.com/p/dyknow-panel-extractor/ dyknow-panel-extractor utility]

[[Category:Proprietary course softwareSoftware]]