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WiTTY allows users to easily record, replay, and share console sessions with just a few clicks.">
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<li><a href=https://syssecfsu.github.io/witty/docs/install/>Installation</a></li>
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<article class=markdown><h1 id=introduction>
Introduction
<a class=anchor href=#introduction>#</a>
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<p><a href=https://github.com/syssecfsu/witty>WiTTY</a> is a cross-platform, open-source, web-based terminal emulator. It exports the terminal interface on the server (i.e., where WiTTY runs) to the browser. Simply run WiTTY on a computer and give it the command to execute when users connect via the browser. WiTTY has the following features that distinguish itself from other similar tools:</p>
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<p>WiTTY allows users to <strong>easily record, replay, and share console sessions</strong> with just a few clicks.</p>
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WiTTY was designed to help teach courses that use UNIX-like command-line interface, such as the software and system security parts of <a href=https://seedsecuritylabs.org/Labs_20.04/>the SEED labs</a>. The biggest challenge in teaching a large such course in the era of pandemic is how to answer students' questions <strong>in the first try</strong>, avoiding long exchange of emails and screenshots. WiTTY makes it a breeze to answer such questions. It is much easier to spot problems with the full history of console sessions.
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Instructors can also record their demos in WiTTY and send them to students. Students can replay these demons however they want. This would help them better understand the knowledge.
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<p>It allows others to <strong>view ongoing interactive sessions</strong>. This is useful for providing live remote help.</p>
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<p>An envisioned use of this feature is to allow students to view live sessions of demos by the instructors. It can also allow live, remote help to students.</p>
<p>A challenge of this use case is that our home networks are almost always behind NAT, making it difficult to run WiTTY as a publicly accessible server. Security is also potentially a concern.</p>
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<p>Great attention has been paid to ensure the cleanses of the code. This, hopefully, provides a useful counter-example of <strong>Do as I say, but not as I do</strong>.</p>
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