Dan Farmer
Author of COPS and SATAN
Publishing the scanner, and getting fired for it
Rating
87Impact score
Domains
Vulnerability scanningForensicsHost auditing
Scouting report
Wrote COPS as a student, then in 1995 released SATAN with Wietse Venema — a scanner that audited a network the way an attacker would, published openly so defenders could run it first. The press predicted the end of the internet; SGI fired him over it; the security scanner became a permanent product category. Later co-wrote Forensic Discovery.
Curator’s note
The original argument that defenders should get the attacker’s tools too.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Dan Farmer by Ian Manka, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Sources
- 01Dan Farmer en.wikipedia.org
- 02SATAN en.wikipedia.org