Marcus J. Ranum
Builder of the First Commercial Firewall
DEC SEAL, the TIS toolkit, and thirty years of contrarianism
Rating
89Impact score
Domains
FirewallsProxiesLogging
Scouting report
Built DEC SEAL, generally credited as the first commercial firewall product, then the TIS Firewall Toolkit and Gauntlet — the code most early internet perimeters were actually made of. Ran whitehouse.gov’s first email server. Has spent the decades since publicly arguing that most of what the industry sells does not work, which has aged better than the products did.
Curator’s note
The perimeter, as an idea people could buy, is largely his fault and his credit.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Marcus J. Ranum by Marcus Ranum (per discussion on ticket), licensed CC BY 3.0.
Sources
- 01Marcus J. Ranum en.wikipedia.org
- 02Firewall (computing) — history en.wikipedia.org