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Comment by axus | Hacker News Reader

"This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices."

I'd thought "never trust the client device" was the golden rule to prevent cheating. A background process that reads the display and fills in the field when you start typing would be difficult to detect.

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I don't know if they'll have a software based 'anti-cheat' but you could be completely undetectable using this method:

HDMI out into splitter from graphics card or tablet, whatever. Use secondary box to ingest video and spit out answers on an alternate display.

They have a ‘secure environment’ but the testing app ‘Bluebook’ is also available for download for practice tests and even to the general public. They have a chromeOS PWA, a Mac Universal app, and a Windows version.

I can also personally attest that the app will run perfectly happy inside a Windows virtual machine, even inside the ‘secure testing mode’, as this is how I personally took the 11th grade PSAT a few months ago.

So what you're saying is someone could record their screen the entire time, with no one the wiser? It would be tricky to use any external programs because the Bluebook app might be able to detect that it's not in focus, and other students/proctors could see something else on the screen.

Yes. A virtual machine specifically bypasses any on-device protections, protections which the terms of service indicate they have. However, I think the primary deterrent to cheating here would be as you mentioned the proctor and the other students.

To get around this, I theorize a more subtle overlay could be fashioned (imagine some sort of screen reader that speaks chatGPT-generated answers through the provided earbuds). However, at that point you could spend your time studying for the test in the first place.

If this is (and remains) true, I would guess that someone will build it and sell it to others. There are enough people out there who will never get above a 1200 — with any amount of studying/coaching — and who would happily pay $2k for a guaranteed 1500+. You wouldn't even need an LLM, really. Just a cellular-enabled laptop that can take screenshots every few seconds and transmit them to a confederate who whispers in your ear. Or to be even less detectable, just faintly displays a letter at the bottom of the screen once the problem has been solved.

1. if you can figure out how to do this, you're intelligent enough to score in the top 90th percentile on the exam. 2. good luck getting away with this in person at the proctored exam.

With the kind of money involved sophisticated cheating by professionals is a thing. This isn’t kids in the bathroom level cheating it’s mob and organized crime level.

So how is it worse than what happens now? These tests are worth a lot to a very small subset of people. The average high schooler (even the bottom 85%+) does not have access to those resources

Yep, the article says the exam is still on-site and proctored. Any cheating would have to be self-contained to the laptop and not obvious to someone looking over the cheater's shoulder.

Hypothetically they could require that you use a device with an included monitor (laptop, tablet) and require that no HDMI cable is plugged it.

This won’t protect against somebody who is willing to open the device up and probe the embedded DisplayPort (or whatever standard) pins, but that’s probably beyond the ability or interest of most people.

I don’t like any of this; if I were asked to install some school spyware I would refuse. But it looks like the plan is for the schools to also allow the students to take the tests there. People should do that instead. Hopefully some parents will be super pedantic and require schools to provide accessible testing space and not use the “you can test at home” option as an out.

> This won’t protect against somebody who is willing to open the device up and probe the embedded DisplayPort (or whatever standard) pins

Much easier: a webcam with a telephoto lens hidden in a lighting fixture.

Or, just use a second device, no? Or read the questions out loud and someone else assists in the background?

Some of the online proctored tests complain about external monitors. It's goofy, but I guess most students use laptops

Seems like this could be a big win for local LLMs =D

The sad future.

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