Converting classic WinAMP skins to HTML/CSS
by CyberShadow on Feb.24, 2010, under Random
I wrote something that cuts up images from WinAMP classic skins to allow using them (with CSS) in web pages.
It allows variable content width/height, using the bitmap font in the “gen” title bar, and uses mouse “hover” effects.
Source: http://github.com/CyberShadow/WSZ2Web
Download: http://github.com/downloads/CyberShadow/WSZ2Web/wsz2web.zip
Examples: http://thecybershadow.net/misc/skins/
Reverse-engineering and deobfuscation of Flash apps
by CyberShadow on Feb.12, 2010, under Hax
I probably should have known better when I started down this path with “cracking” PopCap’s latest version of Bejeweled Blitz. This has taken way more of my time than I had initially planned. On the other hand, now I know how to use Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Flex SDK, XML schemas and JAXB and brushed up on my Java as well.
My previous versions of the cheat consisted of a Mozilla Firefox extension which redirected requests for the game SWF (and data.xml, a configuration file) to my server. The server (configured as a HTTP proxy) sent back an older version of the game SWF, which still had some debugging code left in which allowed you to edit the game board using hotkeys. PopCap has once changed the MD5 salt used to calculate validation checksums (after removing the debugging code), but I got away with it once by uncompressing (gzip) the SWF file, hex-editing the salt, and compressing it back. However, the latest build of the game was obfuscated, so no such tricks would pass this time.
In retrospect (as I wrote on the cheat page), I could have used simpler techniques such as memory editing and replay attacks, but all these could eventually be “patched up”. It would probably even have been simpler if I had written a bot (or just updated the old one) – there really isn’t much to do against screen-scraping bots, other than heuristics and changing the UI every once in a while. Still, I have written an ActionScript 3 deobfuscator.
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PuTTY Knife for KiTTY
by CyberShadow on Jan.07, 2010, under Random
PuTTY Knife is a small program that, when launched, creates a context menu that contains all of your PuTTY sessions. KiTTY is a PuTTY fork with a bunch of new features. Since KiTTY stores its sessions in another registry key, PuTTY Knife doesn’t “see” them.
Here is a patched version that reads the KiTTY registry key instead of the standard PuTTY one:
Download
Edit: I completely missed out on the session launcher feature in KiTTY, which supports KiTTY’s session folder structure.
Searching multiple Excel pricelists
by CyberShadow on Dec.17, 2009, under Random
At least here in Moldova, many computer stores publish their price lists as Microsoft Excel (.xls) files on their web sites, often in a zip archive. To compare the prices for a product in several stores, one usually has to download and unpack the price lists for each store, then search through each one manually.
I made myself something to automate this last year; here it is in case someone finds it useful.
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Bejeweled Blitz update
by CyberShadow on Nov.26, 2009, under Hax
Bejeweled Blitz was updated recently, breaking score updates for the Firefox extension. The on-server files have been updated accordingly – clear your cache if your scores aren’t saving.
No Quarter: V-Sides (Hitlers Must Die), PC TAS
by CyberShadow on Nov.16, 2009, under Hax
Leave a Comment more...Kwirk progress
by CyberShadow on Nov.05, 2009, under Hax
You can follow my progress of solving Kwirk in this thread at the TASvideos.org forums.
Blog set up!
by CyberShadow on Nov.05, 2009, under Website
I’m not much of a blogging person, but I suppose that having some way of logging updates to my website would be nice. I’ll also be posting solutions to little problems I encounter, for the benefit of anyone having the same problems and using a search engine.
