ALL CANDIDATES: What techniques do I need to be able to connect to the paperless exam system?

As part of the transition to paperless exams; question packs are made available to candidates via a Samba share on a Unix host. Samba shares emulate shared folders on Windows hosts.

Candidates will be provided with:

• The host name of the Unix host
• A valid username
• A valid password

Using this information candidates must be able to connect to the host; identify the exposed share and then access that share.

For example, if a candidate is provided with the following details for their exam:

• Host: \\examanswers
• Username: “candidate”
• Password: “Pa55w0rd”

A candidate may consider the following commands from a Windows hosts:

• Create an authenticated connection to the host:

C:\Users\h4x0r>net use \\examanswers\ipc$ /user:candidate “Pa55w0rd”

• Determine the shares available:

C:\Users\h4x0r>net view \\examanswers

Shared resources at \\examanswers

EXAMANSWERS Server
Share   name   Type  Used   as  Comment

——————————————————–

CRT   Disk

The command completed successfully.

• Mount the relevant network share (“CRT” in this example)

C:\Users\h4x0r> net use * \\examanswers\CRT

Drive Z: is now connected to \\examanswers\CRT.

The command completed successfully.

• Then subsequently access the Share Contents using the newly mounted drive (“Z:” in this example).

Note:   The example assumes using a candidate is using a Windows client;  CREST have validated that other operating systems can also access the Samba shares used for exams.

It is the candidate’s responsibility to ensure that their testing platform can be used to meet this requirement otherwise they will be unable to successfully complete their examination.