contest

More than six hundred Russian hackers have been trying to hack down a server-installed content management software in attempt to get over its sophisticated Proactive Protection system. There had been more than 25,000 attacks recorded and effectively repulsed during the software crash test competition hours. The competition was organized by the Bitrix, Inc. team and Positive Technologies IT experts during the "Chaos Constructions CC9 Festival" that took place on 29-30 August 2009 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Both the Festival participants and comers from the Internet were instigated to try to evade the Bitrix brand new Proactive Protection security system as part of the "Bitrix Real-Time Hack Competition". The Bitrix, Inc. team claimed their advanced content management system software can withstand a most aggressive hack attack.

The Festival competitors and the Internet comers got a leg-up, though: the Proactive Protection security system (WAF / Web Application Firewall Plus) had been to some extent modified before the competition in advance, just to be a little bit more "vulnerable". The point of this hack competition was to gain more examples for analyzing common mistakes made by site developers and to show how the new security system shield works in action.

The 2008 Open Source CMS Award launched today, inviting people to visit www.PacktPub.com and submit nominations for their favorite Open Source Content Management Systems. Now in its third year, the Award has helped to support a variety of Content Management Systems gain recognition in a crowded and high quality marketplace.

In 2007, Drupal ousted Joomla! as the overall winner of the Award, in what was another very close contest. With the introduction of four new categories in 2007, the Award succeeded in expanding the opportunities for a wider range of Open Source Content Management Systems to benefit. MODx won the inaugural Most Promising Open Source CMS Award, confirming its position as one of the most respected new CMS’s available. "Winning the award was a tremendous honor for MODx" said Ryan Thrash, co-founder of MODx. "For the team, it validates the past two years of hard work" he concluded.

A new category for 2008 is the Open Source CMS MVP Award, which will recognize the contributions to projects made by individuals that often go unnoticed. According to Damian Carvill, marketing manager at Packt, the company that runs the Award, this will prove to be a significant award. "For the large majority of Open Source projects, it is the tireless work from enthusiastic individuals that enable its growth and adoption, and these are the people that Packt feels is necessary to identify" Carvill said.

Packt has opened up nominations for people to submit their favorite Content Management System at www.PacktPub.com/Award. The top five in each category will go through to final, which begins at the start of September. For more information, please visit Packt’s website www.PacktPub.com/Award.