Re: GSoC 2026: Password Security Wizard - Optimizing the NSE Brute Library

[Adithya Shetty <adithyashetty39 () gmail com>]

Ah, my mistake.

I completely missed that banner on the site.

Thanks for letting me know Gordon

On Tue, 3 Mar 2026 at 01:56, Gordon Fyodor Lyon <fyodor () nmap org> wrote:

> Hi Adithya.  Thanks for your interest, but we haven't participated in GSoC
> since 2017.  You might have missed the banner at the top of
> https://nmap.org/soc/.
>
> Cheers,
> Gordon
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2026 at 7:08 AM Adithya Shetty <adithyashetty39 () gmail com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Nmap Development Team and Fotis,
> >
> > My name is Adithya, and I am a 4th-semester Computer Science student
> > specializing in Cybersecurity. I am writing to express my strong interest
> > in the "Password Security Wizard" project for GSoC 2026.
> >
> > Over the past few days, I have cloned the repository, set up my build
> > environment, and have been digging into the nselib/brute.lua library and
> > several of the -brute.nse scripts (specifically focusing on how
> > ftp-brute.nse implements the Driver and Engine:new functions).
> >
> > Coming from a background of playing CTFs and writing Python/C++ tooling,
> > I am very interested in the project's goal of improving the brute force
> > authentication cracking ability of NSE.
> >
> > Before drafting my formal proposal, I wanted to ask a structural question
> > regarding the performance optimization of the underlying NSE
> > parallelization system: When looking to bring the NSE brute library's
> > performance closer to a dedicated tool like Ncrack, are you currently
> > prioritizing optimizations within the Lua engine's coroutine scheduling, or
> > are you looking more toward optimizing the underlying C/C++ socket handling
> > (Nsock) that the Lua scripts rely on?
> >
> > I am currently testing a few of the brute scripts against local
> > vulnerable VMs to benchmark their current throughput. Any guidance on where
> > the major bottlenecks currently reside would be highly appreciated.
> >
> > Thank you for your time and for maintaining such an incredible project.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> >  Adithya B Shetty
> >
> > Github: adithyashetty39-lang
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sent through the dev mailing list
> > https://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> > Archived at https://seclists.org/nmap-dev/
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