Hello,

The OpenVAS Team (Open Vulnerability Assessment System, [1]) has started a
contest and calls for submission of patches, scripts, converters or anything
else that significantly improves the OpenVAS framework and extends Open Source
Network Vulnerability Testing.

You are free to choose the area of improvements, examples are:

 * New .nasl scripts for recent security alerts
 * NASL libraries for simplifying development of new test scripts
 * Converter routines that (semi-)automatically create NASL
    scripts from formal security alerts.
 * Performance improvements for the current tests.

There are many other ways to extend and improve the OpenVAS framework.
The only hard requirement is that your solution is published as Free Software
under GNU GPLv2+.

The following rewards have already been offered by the contest sponsors:

1st place: 500 Euro
2nd place: 300 Euro
3rd place: 200 Euro

The rewards might increase because additional sponsors are welcome to add to 
the rewards as along as the contest is open. The contest page [2] on the 
OpenVAS website will be kept up-to-date with the latest rewards. If you want 
to sponsor the contest, please get in touch with the project contacts [3].

The sponsors and OpenVAS steering committee will jointly choose the winners
based on these criteria:

 * number of CVEs/BIDs covered
 * relevance of the covered alerts
 * sustainable future benefit (e.g. in the case of supporting APIs)
 * how well the development was coordinated via the public OpenVAS
    mailing lists (teams may win as well)
 * code quality (documentation, design, style)

Contest sponsors are (sorted by amount sponsored):

 * Intevation GmbH, www.intevation.net
 * DN-Systems GmbH, www.dn-systems.de
 * Tim Brown

Time table:

2008-08-23: Contest starts
2008-10-15: Contest closes
2008-10-30: Winners nominated

How to participate:

 * express you wish to participate on the OpenVAS developer mailing list
    and present your idea
 * summarize you contribution before contests closes and submit
    it to the OpenVAS developer mailing list

[1] http://www.openvas.org/
[2] http://www.openvas.org/openvas-contest.html
[3] http://www.openvas.org/constitution.html

-- 
Michael Wiegand                                   OpenPGP key: D7D049EC
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück                    http://www.intevation.de/
Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HR B 18998
Geschäftsführer: Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner