Saturday, 13 September 2025

The Journey and Future of WeChall: From Innovation to What’s Next

WeChall early days

When WeChall first appeared, it was a spark in a dark and scattered landscape. Challenge sites were everywhere, but each one was its own island, with no bridge connecting them. Then came WeChall - an innovation that stitched the fragmented world together. For the first time, hackers/challengers could carry their identity and reputation across platforms, measure themselves against a global scale, and feel part of something larger than any single site. It wasn’t just useful. It was elite.

Those early days carried an energy, a sense of discovery. Watching your linked accounts light up the scoreboard felt like belonging to a secret society. It was proof that someone out there understood what real challenge meant.

The Present: A Quiet Survivor

Today, WeChall is still here. Still growing, though slowly. The fire is smaller, but it hasn’t gone out. New challenge sites rise and fall in the rotten world of hype and disposability, yet WeChall remains - a steady veteran. It is less flashy than the newcomers, but more enduring. A gathering of the dedicated, those who remember why this all began.

But the game has changed. Competitors with sleek designs, corporate funding, and gamified platforms dominate attention. To many new learners, WeChall looks old-school. And maybe it is. But old-school carries weight.

The Future: Two Possible Paths

WeChall now stands at a crossroads.

Path One: Slow Decline

If development remains minimal, funding uncertain, and the user base stagnant, WeChall risks fading into obscurity. Competing platforms with bigger budgets and faster innovation could eventually overshadow it. Challenge sites come and go, and WeChall could one day disappear too. In this outcome, it becomes more of a nostalgic archive than an active hub - respected, but silent.

Path Two: Renewal and Growth

There’s another path - a brighter one. With the right support, WeChall could reinvent itself and spark the same excitement it did in its early days. By opening its doors to volunteers, setting up a clear framework for contributions, and securing donations or sponsorships, the platform could modernize, grow, and inspire again. New features, fresh integrations, and stronger community bonds could transform WeChall from a quiet veteran into a thriving hub once more. A shared sense of ownership and vision would help it thrive again.

Suggestions for a Stronger Future

- Volunteer Framework: Define clear, more refined ways for contributors, so community members can step in with purpose.

- Funding and Donations: Launch a structured donation system, or sponsorships to secure recurring support.

- Community Building: Modernize the forums, add mentoring, or other features to make WeChall not just a tracker, but a living network.

- Modernization: Refresh the site step by step - new integrations, deeper analytics, and even better UX.

- Visibility Through Modern Tools: Use social networks (Facebook/Linkedin), modern chat platforms like Discord, and regular updates to amplify WeChall’s presence and attract a bigger audience - not just new challengers, but also educators, students, security professionals, event organizers, and even companies that could benefit from and contribute to the ecosystem.

---

WeChall began as a daring innovation. Today, it survives as a steady flame in a world where most projects burn out quickly. Tomorrow, it could either fade away or rise again as a beacon for those who seek real challenge, beyond the noise of a rotten world. The choice is not just with its creators - it is with the community it first helped unite.

The question is simple: will WeChall drift into memory, or will the elite rise once more to build its next chapter?

Thursday, 1 May 2014

Capture the Flag - CTF

So recently beside solving challs on challenge sites, I'm also playing CTFs.

Just like challenge sites, CTFs are also computer security competitions. There are 2 types of CTFs: jeopardy and attack-defence. So far I've only played jeopardy ones, and because they are very similar to challenge sites, in this post I will mostly write about them :P

In jeopardy CTFs, you are given a number of challenges in different categories: crypto, stegano, web, pwn, RE, forensic... By solving these challenges you will get special passwords called "flags". Submitting these flags will earn your points. Unlike challenge sites, CTFs are events that usually last for 2 days, so it is recommended that everyone should play CTFs in teams. The teams with the most points will win the CTF. CTFs are a fun way to solve challenges, and many CTFs even offer cash prizes for the top teams.

Most CTFs have qualifier and final rounds. Usually the qualifier rounds are online, and final rounds are on-site. The biggest CTF is DEF CON CTF, which comes together with the famous conference that everyone already knows about.

My team is penthackon. It is a new team consisting mostly of high-ranked players in the WeChall network, and as a result we have done quite well and is currently #6 on the ranking. We even pre-qualified for DEF CON, and some of us will be going to Las Vegas in August to pwn there :P



Monday, 4 August 2008

Farewell to Scortile

Our fellow challenger, Scortile, passed away last month in a car accident, at a young age of 23. The sad news was delivered to Gizmore by his brother. An article of the accident is available here: http://www.ad.nl/utrecht/2466511/Ongeluk_met_dodelijke_afloop.html

Scortile had been around in the challenger world since 2003. He was active in many popular challenge sites, among which are TheBlackSheep, HackQuest, Rankk, and of course WeChall. He was especially skillful in cracking, with 63.46% crackits solved at TBS. And he is currently holding the record of achieving the quality of 82% for fuzzy fingerprinting attack against an SSH private key, as part of a challenge at WeChall.

It was just a year ago that Scortile expressed his desire to compete with rhican and pvcuong on the race to the top. But now he's gone. Forever.

Farewell to him! May he rest in peace!

Saturday, 26 April 2008

Net-Force

I guess it's time to promote another challenge site: Net-Force.

Net-Force is a dutch challenge site with challenges divided into categories similar to TheBlackSheep and HackQuest. The challs are mostly in English, however.

At Net-Force you are ranked according to the ancient Roman empire, from slave to general. At the moment using some magic rhican is the second general there, having solved all the challs :O

And as promised by ilias, Net-Force will be a new member of the WeChall network "pretty" soon.

Friday, 21 March 2008

Hacking school

Most challenge sites have a ranking, where people can compare themselves with other challengers. It is a great source of motivation, but also on the other hand, the root of all evil. Many people have been competing dishonestly by trading solutions, begging for hints and cheating. A true challenger would not want to see that other side of the challenger world. And as a result, a group of topgamers, among which relee, rayden5, bb and chrisi, worked together and finished a cool project - the hacking school.

The main purpose of the hacking school was to create an educational challenge site where people can learn and grow their skills, and especially, cheating and solution trading are prevented. The challenges are reviewed by the "group leaders" for quality assurance, so that only good ones are published. The solutions are different for each user, and all solution attempts are monitored, so that "swapping answers" will not work.

Hacking school was built over 2 years, but in the end for an unknown reason only a framework was released. The framework was hosted at http://www.hacking-school.org, but for an unknown reason it is down for now. You can still have an overview of the site from the Wayback Machine, and if you want a copy of the framework, feel free to contact me.