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From the [http://respondus.com/products/lockdown-browser/index.shtml Product page]:
<em>LockDown Browser® is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Blackboard, ANGEL, Brightspace by D2L, Canvas, Moodle, and Sakai. When students use LockDown Browser they are unable to print, copy, go to another URL, or access other applications. When an assessment is started, students are locked into it until they submit it for grading. Available for Windows, Mac and iOS[sic].</em>
=== <s> Features </s> Bugs ===
* Integrates with Blackboard, ANGEL, Brightspace by D2L, Canvas, Moodle, and Sakai
* Localized for multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese
* Available for both Windows and Mac computers, as well as iPad
===Malware===
LockDown requires administrative privileges to run, and cannot be run as an unprivileged user.
Features of the browser could be construed to violate [http://www.vt.edu/about/acceptable-use.html Virginia Tech Acceptable Use Policy]
by <em>engag[ing] in any activity that might be purposefully harmful to systems or to any information stored thereon...</em>, however
its use is not widespread enough for this to gain any note.
There is a further extension to Respondus LockDown, called Respondus Monitor
<ref>http://respondus.com/products/monitor/</ref> that allows the proctor to spy on users through their webcam.
==Running the Software==
===Wine===
There are multiple tutorials available by a quick web search which claim to get this working in Wine, however, to date, no member of
VTLUUG has succeeded in doing so and existing information indicates it varies by version of the browser.
===Virtual Machine (KVM)===
This refuses to run in a Virtual Machine. It may be possible to add the <code>-cpu kvm=off</code> flag to Qemu to prevent it from detecting a virtualized
environment, but this has not been tested to date. It may also be necessary to disable Virtio drivers and devices.
===Natively (Windows or OS X)===
To run on Windows, the software requires administrative privileges. Previous versions were shown to have used Internet Explorer with certain modifications
executed on the fly, to add the "Lock Down" features, however it currently appears to be a stand-alone browser with some resemblance to Google's Chrome. On both OS X and Windows, it is based off of the open-source Chromium
<ref>http://respondus.com/products/lockdown-browser/requirements.shtml</ref>, although previous OS X versions are
believed to have piggybacked off of Safari features. On Windows, the running user must have administrative privileges to run the student edition, however administrative privileges are not necessary to run the browser on OS X.
A version for iOS (iPad-only) is also available, as well as a version for centrally managed Chromebooks for education (k-12).
== Analysis ==
Only cursory analysis has been done thus far, as the author of this article doesn't have a native windows box to run Respondus on. It appears that on launch, it first connects to an unencrypted http server running in AWS, presumably to check if the version is current, then it checks if it is in a virtualized environment.
==Other Notes==
===Actual Bugs===
* No support for U2F -- requires second (expensive) device for other [[gp:2FA|2 Factor Authentication]] methods
* Easily circumvented
** Most students have second computer (i.e. Smartphone), which can be used for cheating (i.e. Google searching)
** Circumvention methods disadvantage students of lower income, who do not have second device.
* No Linux version, disadvantaging students promoting the use of <b>free software</b>
* Does not prevent collaboration in out-of-class testing
* Superfluous for in-class testing, where students are visually monitored anyway
** At most just promotes lazy proctoring of exams
* Cannot take multiple tests within a single session
* Requires administrative privileges which may not be available on multi-user machines
* Hostile to users of password managers
=== Open questions on debugging ===
* Is a TLS cert chain bundled, or can it be MITMed?
* What kind of protocol does it use to authenticate that it is respondus
** A Kerberos-like protocol would be optimal, but I'd be surprised if they did it
* Does the binary do any integrity checks?
* Does qemu-only emulated devices adequately obfuscate that it runs in a VM? Doesn't seem to
==References==
<references/>
[[Category:Software]]