JMine

I tried to defeat my crazy version of minesweeper.. and failed :D

Wish I had more time now to create more crazy stuff and change the world in the process :P

PS. There's a bug with the timer but I'm too lazy to fix it :D

Hacker skills in action

Have you ever needed to use your 1337 hacker skills in real life as a non-security professional?

I was once given the task of writing a Windows library to connect to a Juniper VPN system. All I was given was just the web interface of the system. A task that cannot be completed without reverse-engineering skills.

Some experiments with the system showed me that the VPN system wasn't too complicated. After the user authorizes himself via the login page, an ActiveX or Java applet will be launched, which will subsequently download and run a Windows application that is responsible for the VPN connection.

Authenticating via the login page programmatically to retrieve the cookie for the session was a trivial task. For downloading and running the Windows VPN application, with my 1337 Java skills, I decided that reverse-engineering the Java applet was the way to go. After decompiling the applet with Jad, all I needed to do was modifying the code to make it run in a "simulated" applet environment, and everything went on smoothly.

Java applet tutorial

Hey guys,

Remember the Java applet tutorial that I promised months ago?

I have been working on it for the last few months, and finally when I noticed there were too many things to cover, I decided to start a blog for it. The blog name is the same as my famous Java applet series - "quangntenemy teaches Java". You can access it at http://qtjava.blogspot.com.

The tutorial is not complete yet, but for now it should help you get started with the easy challs. More interesting lessons, together with tips and tricks will come soon.

If you have any questions, comments and suggestions about Java challs, or anything Java-related, do not hesitate to leave a comment there.

What about things other than Java, you might ask? Just to let you know, I have been starting a new team blog: WeChall at http://wechall.blogspot.com. At the moment I have recruited theAnswer, Gizmore and Unhandled to the team. Hopefully the blog will provide everything you need for the challenger world: from reviews on the cool challenge sites, to online resources, tools, and tips and tricks from the top challengers.

Feel free to visit WeChall and share your knowledge!

FreeRice

If you have been a regular visitor to irc.idlemonkeys.net, probably you have heard about FreeRice, a website that donates rice to poor people in the world.

The rule is simple: for each word you get right, 10 grains of rice is donated to help end world hunger.

During the conversation on #hackquest, some of the geeks showed the desire to save humanity by creating a learning bot (to be exact, a memorizing bot) that plays the game and helps donate the rice. SilentNutcracker and alt3rn4tiv3 started the first implementation of the game. It is built on top of php, curl and mysql.

As a super botter, I could not let them enjoy the fun alone. So I created a similar bot, written in Java. You can grab a copy from my website.

Unlike their version, my bot uses serialized data, without any need for a DBMS. So you only need JRE 5 to get the bot up and running :)

However, I've always been wondering, does botting really help donating rice? I guess that's only true to a certain extend. If too many people launch the bot, it'll be no different from a DDOS attack, and the FreeRice people surely won't like it. So you might want to adjust some settings in freerice.properties to make sure that the bot won't hurt the server too much :P

CryptoBox

Been updating the CryptoBox today. I just can't believe how dusty the code has been. No new feature has been added yet, but the code has undergone a big Java 5 update.
The official version will be released soon :)
Oh and if you're wondering about the applet tutorial, it's not ready yet. But I promise it'll be out before new year :P

quangntenemy teaches java 2 is up!

It must be my lucky day. The jackpot is up at rankk, and now qtj2 has finally been published at tbs too. This second challenge of the qtj series will teach you about object oriented programming in Java.

With 2 challenges being published the same day, I only have a "few" things left to do. The applet tutorial has been pending for so long. And some changes need to be made to "Message Me" to make it solvable. Then some more updates to my website, Steganabara, CryptoBox and of course the bbq project ;)

Stay ready for all the good news ;)

New applet chall! The jackpot

4 years ago, as a student taking the Java programming course instructed by Professor Dave Elliman, I was given the task to fix a broken code for a Fruit machine. It was my first approach to Swing and I really enjoyed it. Although broken, the code was really well designed that it really took me very little time to get the machine working. Being really enjoyed, I enhanced the code even more and the lab instructor was really impressed.

Last week while discussing with Sphinx about writing a Jackpot as the next applet chall, the old code came to my mind. And now it has been recycled to become a real cool challenge. Among the applets I have created, this one has the nicest graphics. The broken code now has become a real gem ;) But don't be lured for its disguise. You'll scream in horror once you see the devils that are protecting those precious gems :P

Curious? If you have yet to create an account at rankk, do so right now and climb up to level 7 to defeat this chall!

New Java applet challenge

Just created a quick one for the new pyramid. Named "Chamber door". Not as hard as the others I have made but it goes really well with the ancient Egyptian background ;)
Create an account at the new pyramid, defeat the first 4 levels to give it a try guys :D

Yet another blog

Hey dude, are you out of mind? You have too many blogs already! Why create a new one?

Hehe true. But since I'm working on too many different things I believe I really need a new blog. This one will be about problems I encounter on my projects (and surely the solutions to them). I hope this will help those who encounter the same problem as me.

Now let's get onto the first problem.

Since the return of an old friend who was fighting alongside with me in the fierce battle to wipe out all the evilness in this world, I am now working on a new project - Enfair (you'll hear more details about it soon :P). The project makes use of 2 common libraries - JSF and MyFaces Tomahawk. On his comp everything went smoothly without any problem. But on mine the stupid thing always refused to work by throwing a crazy exception:

07/07/04 16:50:43 oracle.classloader.util.AnnotatedClassNotFoundException:

     Missing class: [Ljava.lang.String;

   Dependent class: com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener
            Loader: current-workspace-app.web.Tomahawk-Project1-webapp:0.0.0
       Code-Source: .../jdevstudio10132/jdev/mywork/Tomahawk/Project1/public_html/WEB-INF/lib/jsf-impl.jar
     Configuration: WEB-INF/lib/ directory in .../jdevstudio10132/jdev/mywork/Tomahawk/Project1/public_html/WEB-INF/lib

This load was initiated at current-workspace-app.web.Tomahawk-Project1-webapp:0.0.0 using the loadClass() method.

Been trying to resolve the problem without any luck, I tried deploying the project to Tomcat. A similar exception is thrown:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: [Ljava.lang.String;
   at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1358)
   at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1204)

It has been bugging me for quite a while until I entered the right keyword on Google and found the solution.

The problem was that Tomahawk and the JSF library bundled with JDeveloper were not fully compatible in Java 6. Fortunately there have been a new patch from https://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net to fix it. I downloaded version 1.2_04 P02 (23 May 2007) and it runs like a charm now :)

So scary how a tiny problem could lead to a big disaster.

Java-Applet tutorial?

Do you want a Java-Applet tutorial? What would you like to be included in the tutorial? Cast your vote here ;)

Do you want a Java-Applet tutorial?
	Yes, please!
	No, I know enough Java for these challs
	No, it's more fun to solve them all by myself ;)
	No - other
	Doesn't matter, I don't want to touch those evil challs you created :P
Free polls from Pollhost.com

New version of qtj 1?

Since many are having difficulty in picking the right solution from the many that give a perfect score, I'm considering to add some more checks into the challenge to make it easier. What do you think?

Do you want a new and easier version of "quangntenemy teaches Java"?
	Yes, it's a real pain to find the only solution among the "perfect score"
	Yes, it's too hard for me
	Yes - other
	No, it's more fun as it is
	No, it's not hard at all
	No - other
	Doesn't matter, I already solved it :P
	Doesn't matter, I wouldn't want to touch it :P
Free polls from Pollhost.com

New host

OK, quangntenemy teaches Java 2 and Message Me have been moved to my site hosted at t35.com. The new links for the challenges are:
http://quangntenemy.t35.com/javalesson2/
http://quangntenemy.t35.com/messageme/
The only bad thing about t35 is that their ads scripts are really BADC0DED, therefore spoiled my W3C "valid" icons :P They sure need some brainwash.
Anyway, enjoy the challenges (and slap Inferno with relee's frozen trout for the delay in uploading them :P)

New challenge ready for submission

Thanks to Chemi the challenge is now fully functioned (no need for a weekly quangOS security update :P) . Submitting it to Inferno today :D
Starting work on Message Me.
Oh, solved the new problem 139 at project Euler also ;)

New chall ready to go ;)

Ok, the package is complete with a detailed how-to and an automatic solver.
Will be reviewing it once again next Monday before submitting ;)
Be prepared for some fun ;)

New chall

Something new today ;)
quangntenemy teaches Java 2 is ready for solving ;P Writing the Solver & readme for submitting.
New idea for a new (special?) challenge: Message Me :D

Edited: Updated JavaLesson2.jar a bit. If you want the updated (and easier :D) version you should download it again.

First post

Hey guys,

Starting from today I'll be an active blogger :D Just to show you I'm still active and creating some cool stuff for you :P "I blog, therefore I exist" :D

Here you can find information about tbs challenges I'm creating, non-commercial projects I'm working on, or other stuff about Java, Linux, cryptography, internet security and any other thing that I like :D

A piece of good news: quangntenemy teaches Java 2 is now available for beta testing at http://quangntenemy.googlepages.com/index.html. You might want to ask why I don't put it up on http://www.freewebs.com/quangntenemy? Well the host got blocked by a stupid firewall. But I will try to get around it someday. In this world it's just wonderful that there's a way around everything :D

That's it for today! Enjoy the challenge! More will be coming next week :D