WASPY Award 2012 Candidates

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2012 WASPY Award Finalists

WASPY Award 2012 Candidates

Candidate: Helen Gao

Candidate Submitted By: China Chapter

Accomplishments: Senior Architect,Global Membership Committee Chair, One of Chinese Project leader,Long Island Chapter Leader, AppSec Asia 2011 organizer, etc...

Why this person was chosen?: Helen volunteered to OWASP since 2006 and contributed a lot for OWASP as a member of Global Membership Committee and Long Island Chapter leaders. Also helen helped a lot for Great China area as a leader of Chinese Project. Moreover she is one of the main organizer for AppSec Asia 2011. Right now, Helen is the chair of Global Membership Committee.

Candidate:Abbas Naderi Afooshteh

Candidate Submitted By:Iran Chapter

Accomplishments:Number 1 hacker in middle east, CEO of an international InfoSec company, administered two information security conferences in the region, leader of two OWASP projects and active participant in more than 10, active member of International Secure Software Engineering Council, lectured more than 20 courses, numerous InfoSec PhD scholarships, and only 25 years old.

Why this person was chosen?Abbas has been an OWASP participant for more than 5 years, spreading the word and knowledge as well as participating in numerous projects such as ESAPI, ASVS, WebGoat, etc. He has also ranked top on many CTFs around the world promoting OWASPs name, along with translating many OWASP documents and presenting the original and the translated version in plenty of workshops throughout the world. Publishing many whitepapers and blog posts about information security on his blog is his usual hobby. Moreover he has developed a lightweight secure framework named jFramework which is powering more than 11000 webpages today. For GSoC 2012, three people directly contacted Abbas to work with him on various PHP projects for OWASP but the projects were not approved.

Candidate:Dr. Kees Leune

Candidate Submitted By:Long Island Chapter

Accomplishments:Dr. Leune stands out because he not only walks the walk, but also talks the talk, in classrooms where future software engineers are learning how to make the Internet a more secure place. Dr. Leune is an information security officer at Adelphi University. He practices OWASP everyday when he manages the network that service thousands of students and staffs. He is also a professor at the university and a trainer in other institutions. He teaches with extensive coverage of OWASP.

Why this person was chosen?Dr. Leune has been a long time supporter of OWASP. He organized several chapter meetings. He provided equipment and meeting rooms. Dr. Leune is well regarded in the information security field. Whenever he teaches, audience always leave with deep admiration for him and knowledge they can use immediately. Dr. Leune promotes OWASP whenever he could, for example at different conferences including SOURCE Boston, EDUCAUSE/Internet2 and Security Professionals. Dr. Leune is a confirmed OWASP member. Because of him, Adelphi became an educational supporter of OWASP in 2010.

Please see Dr. Leune's publication and affiliation

Candidate:Simon Bennetts

Candidate Submitted By:Zed Attack Proxy Project

Accomplishments:OWASP ZAP Founder and project leader, GSoC Mentor, OWASP Manchester founder, international speaker

Why this person was chosen?:Simon started the OWASP Zed Attack Proxy Project in 2010 and actively leads the international group of volunteers who develop it. This summer he mentored 2 Google Summer of Code students working on ZAP. He started the OWASP Manchester chapter and has encouraged and supported the formation of the new East Midlands and Newcastle chapters. Simon has talked about ZAP and OWASP at both security and not security events around in Europe, America and Australia. He is also involved in the OWASP Data Exchange Format and AppSensor projects, started the Web Application Security Testing Cheat Sheet and has contributed to other open source security projects such as the BodgeIt Store and the Web Application Vulnerability Scanner Evaluation Project (wavsep).

Candidate:Ryan Barnett

Candidate Submitted By:OWASP HTTP POST TOOL

Accomplishments:Ryan is a core developers on the OWASP CRS project https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_ModSecurity_Core_Rule_Set_Project

Why this person was chosen?When working on the HTTP POST TOOL we made it available for testing to many organizations so that before we released a tool that could be potentially malicious there were well documented defensive approaches. Ryan Barnett was not only interested from the initial presentation at OWASP AppSec DC 2010 but worked to develop defensive methods for Mod_Security to educate and provide assistance to the OWASP community members BEFORE it was released.

Ryan has been a long time contributor to the OWASP organization and should be recognized formally for this outstanding volunteer service.

1) Helped lead the effort to bring Mod_Security to the Microsoft IIS platform and NGINX.

2) Providing best practices and training for virtual patching processes to mitigate vulns at conferences worldwide.

Candidate:Breno Silva Pinto OWASP Brasilia Chapter Leader

Candidate Submitted By:OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS) Project

Accomplishments:Breno added many important features to ModSecurity to help prevent web-based attacks:
 * Prevention of HTTP Slow Request/Read DoS Attacks
 * HMAC Token Protection to help prevent parameter tampering, directory traversals and cross-site request forgery attacks.
 * Data Substitution Capabilities to modify content to remove data leakages and malicious payloads.
 * Software Security with Federal Government

Why this person was chosen? Breno is the core developer of the hugely popular open source ModSecurity web application firewall project - http://www.modsecurity.org/. Breno is a passionate application software defender in Brazil that has greatly helped the owasp community worldwide with his contributions and presentations at conference.

Candidate:Israel Bryski

Candidate Submitted By:NYC Chapter

Accomplishments:Israel is a volunteer to the OWASP NYC Chapter that brings his experiences, connections and passion for community to help OWASP Foundation at a local level.

Why this person was chosen?From management of the call for papers of the local chapter to helping with set-up and break down of meetings. Its volunteers that make OWASP happen and Israel is one of the people that make it happen with less words and more action.

Candidate: Joan Hardy

Candidate Submitted By:NJ Chapter

Accomplishments: Joan Hardy is a volunteer of the OWASP New Jersey Chapter. She has assisted with the recruitment of speakers, venues and was the lead on a study group focused on application security.

Why this person was chosen? Volunteers such as Joan who have also worked extremely close with people such as Peter Dean and Tom Ryan on fostering results.

Candidate: Charles Henderson

Candidate Submitted By: OWASP RFP Project https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_RFP-Criteria

Accomplishments:  This OWASP effort has been adopted by numerous organizations worldwide to help them meet their contracting needs when procuring application security services.

Why this person was chosen?Project contributor

Candidate: Gustavo Barbato

Candidate Submitted By: FHR project

Accomplishments: chaired the AppSec Latam 2011 conference and lead expansion the chapter base in Brazil. The number of chapters more than doubled since he started pushing this initiative.

Why this person was chosen?: Hard work done to expand and consolidate OWASP.

Candidate:Kostas Papapanagiotou

Candidate Submitted By:Greek Chapter

Accomplishments:Kostas has proved to be an essential member of OWASP both in Greece and globally.

He started as board member for that OWASP chapter in early 2004 and even as a board member he managed to lead the Greek translation effort, organise chapter meetings, be the editor of Greek chapter's blog and newsletters(one of the first globally owasp newsletters) and even promote OWASP in local news outlets such as the National Television.

Kostas is now and for the past 4 years the Greek Chapter OWASP leader.

Why this person was chosen?:Continuing and increasing his enthusiasm for OWASP and web application security even more, Kostas started to involve different departments from the Greek government into web application security. In 2011 he managed to organise an OWASP training day at the Greek General Secretariat of Information Systems with great success for both owasp and web application security in Greece. https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Greece/Training/OWASP_projects_and_resources_you_can_use_TODAY)

In parallel Kostas was promoting OWASP and application security in Universities and other academic organisations with great success and enthusiasm. Eventually he created and now co-leads the OWASP hackademic challenges project (https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Hackademic_Challenges_Project), which is a global owasp project in promoting application security within academia. Bold text It is worth noting that Hackademic challenges was also successfully selected by GSOC as one of the OWASP projects to be funded (http://lists.owasp.org/pipermail/owasp-hackademic-challenges/2012-April/000020.html)

In addition to the above Kostas has promoted OWASP with every opportunity he gets. He has promoted OWASP at Athens Digital Week, Greek FOSS conferences, E-Business Forum and Greek Magazines and many more.

More recently Kostas organised with great success the Global OWASP Appsec EU conference in Athens. This conference was certainly one of the biggest international conferences to be organised in Greece and one of the biggest annual events organised by OWASP. Kostas once more proved that he is capable both to manage, organise and also promote web application security in a global level.

As the committee of the Greek OWASP chapter we certainly believe that Kostas Papapanagiotou is one of the most globally valuable members of the OWASP community and he is also one of the biggest Web Application Security voices within the Greek community.

Candidate: Cassio Goldschmidt

Candidate Submitted By: Los Angeles Chapter

Accomplishments:Founder of Los Angeles chapter and president till Dec 2009

Los Angeles board member 2010-2012

Co-Chair AppSec USA 2010

Global Conferences Committee 2011

Chair (or Co-Chair) AppSec Brazil 2011

Founding father of many chapters in Brazil

Professional summary: Cassio Goldschmidt is a globally recognized application security leader with strong background in both product and program-level security. Outside work, Cassio is known for his contributions to Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode), the Common Weakness Enumeration(CWE)/SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security (SANS) Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors, along with contributing to the security education curriculum of numerous universities and helping to create International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium(ISC)2’s Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP)certification. Cassio was one of the three finalist in the first (ISC)² Americas Information Security Leadership (ISLA) Awards 2011 in the Information Security Practitioner category and endowed with the special Community Service Star award during the same occasion. Cassio holds a number of US patents and is an accomplished writer and presenter in the field of application security.

Why this person was chosen?Cassio exemplifies what OWASP is about -- impressive professional accomplishments, countless contributions to software security and selfless volunteerism. Cassio's contributions to OWASP has made chapters in Los Angeles and Brazil started and successful, and OWASP stronger as a community. Although Cassio has resigned from volunteer positions at OWASP, his efforts must not be forgotten.

Candidate: V.Vasanthkumar

Candidate Submitted By: OWASP Xelenium Project

Accomplishments:Project Leader of OWASP Xelenium Project, Conceived, Designed, Developed and Tested the project single handedly.

Why this person was chosen? I would like to self nominate me for this award. As I am the only person who works on this initiative, this award would help me ascertain that my efforts are put in right direction and also would help me in garnering the support and guidance from fellow OWASP members. Also, Vasanth is not a security specialist and works as a full time test automation engineer. He learns about the security testing vulnerabilities in his free time and designs the automation strategy to identify them.

Xelenium is an automated solution that helps to identify security vulnerabilities present in the web application. First published in the month of June 2012, this solution has been downloaded for more than 5000 times till now. Current version helps in identifying the cross site scripting threats. In the subsequent versions, Xelenium will be enhanced to include other security vulnerabilities.