Introducing the 2013 Nmap/Google Summer of Code Team!

[Fyodor <fyodor () nmap org>]

Hello everyone.  The Nmap Project received a spectacular batch of 40 Summer
of Code proposals this year, and I'm happy to report that Google has agreed
to sponsor three amazing students to spend this summer enhancing the Nmap
Security Scanner! I'm delighted to introduce the 2013 team:

*George Chatzisofroniou* will enhance Nmap's web scanning support.  Nmap
already has more than 80 http-related Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) scripts,
but George will show us how much more is possible.  The web has grown to
dominate the Internet and is becoming ever-more complex, so it is critical
that Nmap help keep web sites secure.  He has already written several
scripts.  George is a fourth-year student pursuing a bachelor's degree in
Computer Science at the University of Piraeus in Greece.  He will be
mentored by our resident Lua expert (and previous SoC student and mentor)
Patrick Donnelly.

*Jacek Wielemborek* came at us with an audacious idea: adding Lua scripting
support to our Ncat utility (http://nmap.org/ncat/).  Such a big change
raises questions of architecture, design, and purpose, so we asked Jacek
for more details.  He came back with a proposal (
http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2013/q2/276) and even an initial proof of
concept implementation.  This could really take Ncat to the next level of
functionality!  Jacek is soon to graduate from the University of Lodz in
Poland with bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Management.  He will
be mentored by David Fifield, who joined the Nmap Project as a SoC student
in 2007, later became a SoC mentor, and now is Nmap's co-maintainer.

*Yang Luo* will be our WinPcap developer and low-level Windows expert.
 While Windows is probably Nmap's 2nd most popular platform (behind Linux),
it is shortchanged in developer attention because most of us run Linux.  In
particular, we have many desired improvements to the WinPcap packet
capturing library described at http://nmap.org/soc/#winpcap.  Yang has
already developed plans for implementing most of these enhancements.  He is
nearing completion of a master's degree in Computer Science from Beihang
University in Beijing, China and will be mentored by Nmap author Fyodor.

I'm also happy to report that Henri Doreau has agreed to serve as backup
mentor for all three students.  Not only does he offer unique insight from
his development work all over the Nmap codebase, but this gives us better
time zone coverage since he's in Europe while our other mentors are
U.S.-based.

This is the Nmap Project's ninth year participating in the Google Summer of
Code.  If you enjoy the Zenmap GUI, Ncat, Ndiff, Nping, Ncrack, or the Nmap
Scripting Engine, you're using features developed in a large part by
previous Summer of Code students.  And with a team like this, we can't help
but expect more great things!  Full-time coding starts June 17, but we have
already started project brainstorming and planning.  Some participants may
use this community bonding period to get an early start on coding, while
others will focus on testing Nmap and reading the code and documentation.

Please join us in welcoming this new team of Nmap SoC students!  Most of
the development will be done on the nmap dev list (
http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/), where everybody is encouraged to
participate in coding, suggesting ideas, testing, etc.

I'd also like to offer big thanks to Google for putting another six million
dollars (over all projects) into open source development this summer!  You
can read about all the other organizations and their accepted students at
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/search/label/gsoc

Cheers,
Fyodor
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