Dan Farmer (born April 5, 1962) is an American

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

researcher and programmer who was a pioneer in the development of

vulnerability scanner A vulnerability scanner is a computer program designed to assess computers, networks or applications for known weaknesses. These scanners are used to discover the weaknesses of a given system. They are utilized in the identification and detecti ...

s for

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s and

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

Life and career

Farmer developed his first

software suite A software suite (also known as an application suite) is a collection of computer programs (application software, or programming software) of related functionality, sharing a similar user interface and the ability to easily exchange data with eac ...

while he was a

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

student at

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

in 1989.

Gene Spafford Eugene Howard Spafford (born 1956), known as Spaf, is an American professor of computer science at Purdue University and a computer security expert. Spafford serves as an advisor to U.S. government agencies and corporations. In 1998, he founded ...

, one of his professors, helped him to start the project. The software, called the Computer Oracle and Password System (COPS), comprises several small, specialized

s designed to identify security weaknesses in one part of a Unix operating system. In 1995, Farmer and

Wietse Venema Wietse Zweitze Venema (born 1951) is a Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dutch programmer and physicist best known for writing the Postfix (software), Postfix email system. He also wrote TCP Wrapper and collaborated with Dan Farmer to produce the comp ...

(a Dutch programmer and physicist) developed a second vulnerability scanner called the

Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN) was a free software vulnerability scanner for analyzing networked computers. SATAN captured the attention of a broad technical audience, appearing in ''PC Magazine'' and drawing threats ...

(SATAN). Due to a misunderstanding of SATAN's capabilities, when it was first published, some

network administrator A network administrator is a person designated in an organization whose responsibility includes maintaining computer infrastructures with emphasis on local area networks (LANs) up to wide area networks (WANs). Responsibilities may vary between org ...

s and law enforcement personnel believed that

hackers A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

would use it to identify and break into vulnerable computers. Consequently,

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

terminated Farmer's employment. However, contrary to popular opinion, SATAN did not function as an automatic hacking program that undermined network security. Rather, it operated as an audit on network security that identified vulnerabilities and made suggestions to help prevent them. No information about how security vulnerabilities could be exploited was provided by the tool. Within a few years, the use of

s such as SATAN became an accepted method for auditing computer and network security. He co-developed the Titan vulnerability scanner with Brad Powell and Matt Archibald, which they presented at the

Large Installation System Administration Conference Large means of great size. Large may also refer to: Mathematics * Arbitrarily large, a phrase in mathematics * Large cardinal, a property of certain transfinite numbers * Large category, a category with a proper class of objects and morphisms (o ...

(LISA) in 1998. Farmer and Venema collaborated again to develop a computer forensics suite called

The Coroner's Toolkit The Coroner's Toolkit (or TCT) is a suite of free computer security programs by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema for digital forensic analysis. The suite runs under several Unix-related operating systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, SunOS/ Solaris, ...

, and later coauthored ''Forensic Discovery'' (2005), a book about computer forensics.''Forensic Discovery'',

Addison-Wesley Professional Addison-Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson PLC, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison-Wesley also distributes its technical titles through ...

. . Farmer co-founded Elemental Security with Dayne Myers, and served as the corporation's chief technical officer.

References

Bibliography

External links

Home page

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Hackers
episode of NetCafe containing an interview with Dan Farmer {{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Dan 1962 births Living people Purdue University alumni Chief technology officers of computer security companies American chief technology officers Computer science writers Silicon Graphics people