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Safe Exam Browser Patch

The Story

This project is born when my school decided to implement Safe Exam Browser with their Moodle instance. Safe Exam Browser limits user's freedom by blocking access to everything that is not its processes. So, this project came to the rescue. It took me almost one week to scan the whole SEB project and disable its protections, then I had to write a program to easly replace the original files with patched ones. I designed a very simple GUI and wrote the code behind it in the simplest and dumbest way I could (I was full of tests in that week).

Understanding the SEB Patch

This is a Patch to remove ALL the restrictions of Safe Exam Browser. It ships with Kiosk Mode completely off as well as almost no restrictions. To apply this patch you need administrator privileges in the target machine. Note that this patch is done for demo purpouses only. Chating in exams is forbidden and may lead to severe consequencies, you are responsible for what you do.

• The patch consists of modified and recompiled Safe Exam Browser files to remove restrictions
• When you hit patch on the patcher, it creates a backup copy of the original SEB files (if told to) and overwrites then the original files with patched ones
• This project is legal as it follows the MPL 2.0 license which is the license SEB is released with

Patcher UI

The UI is very simple and easy to understand:

• The text box writes the action the patch does and eventual errors
• The backup checkbox allows to backup original files before overwriting them with patched versions
• The Patch buttons starts the Patch process
  While the SEB Offline Patcher is a bit more complicated, it will be explained in the installation chapter below.

Patched SEB UI

The UI is almost the same as the original SEB but with:

• Obviously no virtual desktop and no Kiosk mode
• The home button
• Back and foward buttons
• Reload button
• Address bar (removed on latest updates as a popular request)
• Zoom function
• Find feature
• DevTools
• Shortcuts enabled (CTRL+C, CTRL+V, etc)
• Clipboard enabled
• Browser Exam Key emulation

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: The patcher says my SEB version is not supported.

A: Check if your SEB version matches the supported version in the repository README.md and try again.

Q: The patcher says I don't have Safe Exam Browser installed

A: Just install Safe Exam Browser. If it still says that, open an issue and I will try my best to help.

Q: The patcher is showing some strange errors.

A: If you meet the requirements for SEB and the patched SEB, make an issue here and I'll be happy to help.

Q: Safe Exam Browser makes the computer freeze for a while while it's closing

A: Yes, I know that, it's a known issue. To properly close Safe Exam Browser use CTRL+Q. This issue will be fixed as soon as I find a fix.

Q: Safe Exam Browser modifies the fullscreen window size

A: I know, it's a known issue. To fix, just restart explorer.exe from task manager.

Q: Can you make a patch for the version.../with...?

A: No, I'm not making custom patch versions.

Download

Normal Installation

First installation

1. First, installing Safe Exam Browser is required. Go to the SEB Official Website and download it. The release must match the supported release mentioned in the repository README.md
2. Download the latest release
3. Close Safe Exam Browser
4. Run the patch
5. Uncheck Backup if you don't need it
6. Click patch
7. Review the logs if there's something wrong (in that textbox mentioned before, there are now INFO, WARNING and ERROR for more detailed infos)
8. Close the patch if you are satisfied and run Safe Exam Browser

Updating the patch

1. Download the latest release
2. Close Safe Exam Browser
3. Open the patch-seb.exe file
4. Uncheck Backup
5. Click Patch
6. Done

Reverting the patch

NOTE: This is only available if the backup option has been selected in the previous phase

1. Delete the patched SEB files (you can find which ones in the source code)
2. Remove the .backup extension from every file
3. Done

Offline Installation

Offline installation is the installation method you can use to patch installations on computers you don't have the administrator privileges on. Note that this is done at your own risk.

1. Boot a live Windows installation, also known as a Preinstallation Environment, I personally recommend my Windows 10 PE.
2. Download the latest release
3. Open the patch-seb.exe file
4. Select the partition that corresponds to your Windows installation from the dropdown menu and click use
5. If you are not an advanced user, leave everything at defaults and click Patch
6. Done, reboot to your normal Windows installation
7. Remember that booting from a live Windows installation requires an USB media, the ISO and access to the computer/motherboard boot menu.

To access the computer's boot menu, you need to press/keep pressed a key combination, below there's a non-exaustive list with some of them for most OEMs:

• Acer - F2
• Apple - Press and keep pressing Option (near the ⌘ button)
• Asus - Delete (Del)
• Dell - F12
• Gateway - F1
• HP - F9
• Intel - F2
• Lenovo - F12
• Microsoft Surface - USB boot: press and keep pressing Volume Down, UEFI boot: press and keep pressing Volume Up
• Toshiba - F2 or F12
• Other - Usually Esc, a function button from F1 to F12, Enter or Delete

Browser Exam Key emulation

Starting version v1.8 a new Browser Exam Key emulation has been added. What it does is allowing the user to customize the Browser Exam Key that SEB will send to the exam server. This might be required in some environments where the exam server is configured to allow only specific Browser Exam Keys. To set it up:

1. Go to your documents folder
2. Create a Vichingo455 folder
3. Under the Vichingo455 folder, create a SEBPatch folder
4. Create a text file and name it bek.txt
5. Open it and paste the Browser Exam Key, then save the file
6. SEB will load that key at startup instead of calculating it