Stefan Esser is an independent Security Consultant, that is well known in the security community for his advisories, white papers, disclosures and exploits about popular Open Source Software packages like Linux, NetBSD, Samba, Cyrus IMAPD, Gaim, Ethereal, CVS, Subversion, MySQL and PHP. Stefan contributes to the source code of PHP for 5 years and was a founding member of php.net's Security Response Team until he retired from it in the end of 2006. Because of his indepth knowledge of the PHP source code, he is an excellent auditor for PHP web applications, with a background knowledge that is unique in the PHP community. In 2007, Stefan was listed by Eweek as one of the 15 Most Influential People in IT-Security after having organized the Month of PHP Security.