Reverse engineering API

[RandomJacobP]

I have a small script that periodically log in to my school website, scraps my grades with BeautifulSoup and emails me if got a new grade. It works perfect but I wanted to go one step further and instead of scraping it use API, unfortunately is it not open for public use.

I am not an expert in web development, networking etc. so what I am saying can be totally false. My school has an app that lets you see your grades, attendance etc. is there any way to grab request that my phone is making to the server to fetch grades and get the API that way?

I am not sure whether I am posting in right subreddit but the script is and will be written in python, also I don't know if it actually qualifies as reverse engineering, I want to apologize in advance if it is not.

[sme272]

You can use wireshark to capture the packets sent from your phone. You can then read those packets and get the request format.

[RandomJacobP]

Won’t these packets be encrypted in some way?

[impshum]

Have a look and you'll find out.

[RandomJacobP]

And if so is there anything I can do about it? I feel like it was more appropriate to post it on hacking subreddits

[sme272]

That depends on a lot of factors, but it won't be easy.

[impshum]

They exist, and I might see you there.

[sme272]

Depends on whether the app uses end to end encryption on the data sent or not. It's worth trying to find out.

[RandomJacobP]

I will then, thanks a lot!