As some of you already know, I’ll have to delay the challenge for some time. This is because my laptop’s AC adapter broke, and the only place I had everything related to the challenge was on the laptop.
So you’ll just have to wait a few weeks for the first clue (until I get a replacement for the adapter).
Bilddagboken.se is a swedish site where people can share/show their photos to others (translates to image diary). I’m not an active user, but as I tried I found out that it’s not possible to save an image from the site using right click -> save image - they’ve put a layer above the images filled with a transparent 1×1 pixel image.
At first I tried to bypass it using Opera’s content blocking feature, but though it did remove the filler image, the div containing was still in the way. Therefore I opted to use user javascript to remove it.
If you want to use it you:
1. Download it. (Right click -> Save target as)
2. Put it in it’s own folder.
3. Open Opera’s preferences dialog, and go to Advanced -> Content and click the Manage site preferences button. Then press the Add button in the new window.
4. Enter bilddagboken.se in the site text box, and then go to the Scripting tab. There press the Choose button on the lower left and browse to the folder where you saved the javascript file.
5. Press OK -> Close -> OK, and you’re done.
You should now be able to save images at bilddagboken.se by right clicking them.
The javascript is probably usable in Firefox as well using some addon, but I can’t say for sure as I don’t use it.
Update as of 2008-03-19: The recent redesign of their site makes this script deprecated, as they’ve removed the protection.
I’ve constructed a weak cipher and made a sample implementation of it, and now I have a challenge for you: Find the key with which this file has been enciphered. You can find the characters supported by the cipher in this file.
To help you out a bit you’ll also get the sample program which can encipher and decipher text using a specified key. Please note that it’s not intended to reverse engineer the program.
If no-one has reported progress (or success) after one week I’ll post the source code to the librarary, and if there’s still no progress after yet another week I’ll also post the non-enciphered version of the text. Then I’ll wait a month or so untill I post the answer.
I intend to release the library and sample application later, but for now you are not allowed to modify or redistribute them.
Good luck!
I’m not usually the one to write just to comment stuff that I’ve seen or read, but one of the latest f8d strips really hits the spot.