It was an adventure
Registering a Senior
Even though I try not to be unnecessarily negative, I knew there'd be problems. Last time it was the system for selling motorway vignettes. So before the fateful 8 AM on Friday morning I called my grandmother to gather all the necessary information (insurance number — usually matches the birth ID number, preferred vaccination centre). I didn't wait — I registered at exactly eight o'clock. This turned out to be a great idea, because the SMS gateway couldn't send more than 20 texts per minute! Quite a big problem when you have potentially 400,000 users.
I then filled in everything required (email, first name, last name, insurance number aka birth ID number, address, phone, and selected a preferred vaccination centre). Immediately after registration the system told me that unfortunately there were no available slots at my chosen location.
So I picked a backup location that had available slots. I clicked a date, selected a time... clicked register and the page kept loading and loading until it showed the following — We'll be back shortly! It was 8:07. The website was completely overwhelmed and stayed that way until late evening (around 23:00) when response times finally improved.
The system was clearly overloaded, hence the following screen.
After some time I managed to click through to the booking again! This time a different error.
By the afternoon it was looking more promising... unfortunately with another error. No available slots found, even though I could still select a location...
When I finally managed to select a location, it ended at the following screen. I saw this screen more than 10 times.
The last straw was this screen — system capacity fully occupied!
I hoped demand would drop overnight and I'd be able to book then. Nope — overnight the system was still showing the same familiar message.
So I waited for morning and a fresh chance. At 9:21 it finally worked — 25 hours and 20 minutes later than planned.
Registration
As Filip Šedivý pointed out — parameter validation happens on the client side! Which means only one thing: anyone can register. Just modify the data to enable clicking the submit button. The system does the rest, treating the data as valid and completing the registration, including sending PIN2! This way you get senior status, so you can jump the queue any time later...
When you find a bug like this, the question is — what other bugs does the portal have? Because this is a basic one. I don't even want to think about what else might be lurking.
