Dan Farmer is an American computer security

Computer security

Computer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to...

 researcher. In a summer course in 1989, in order to graduate from Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

 he started the development of the COPS

COPS (software)

COPS was the first common Unix computer system security scanning tool,created by Dan Farmer; Gene Spafford helped him start it in 1989 while Dan was in summer school at Purdue University.-Features:...

 program for identifying security issues on Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 systems under Gene Spafford

Gene Spafford

Eugene Howard Spafford , commonly known as Spaf, is a professor of computer science at Purdue University and a leading computer security expert....

, first releasing it after leaving Purdue in late 1989. In 1995, Farmer and Wietse Venema

Wietse Venema

Dr. Wietse Zweitze Venema is a Dutch programmer and physicist best known for writing the Postfix email system. He also wrote TCP Wrapper and collaborated with Dan Farmer and Samuel Johnson to produce the computer security tools SATAN and The Coroner's Toolkit.-Biography:He studied physics at the...

 created Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks

Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks

The Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks is a testing and reporting toolbox that collects a variety of information about networked hosts and was considered one of the best when written. In fact, it was the first truly user-friendly network scanner...

 (SATAN), one of the earliest network based vulnerability scanners.

SATAN was a controversial program when it was released, because some security administrators and law enforcement personnel believed that hackers would use it to identify and break into private networks. The release of SATAN led SGI

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

 to fire Dan Farmer.

With Venema, Farmer authored Forensic Discovery, a book about forensic techniques for gathering digital evidence.

Dan Farmer was the CTO

Chief technical officer

A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....

 of Elemental Security, a company he co-founded with Dayne Myers.

Notable projects

• The Coroner's Toolkit
  The Coroner's Toolkit
  The Coroner's Toolkit is a suite of computer security programs by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema. It is used to assist in digital forensic analysis.The suite runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, SunOS/Solaris and Linux...
  
   (co-authored with Venema)
• SATAN
  Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks
  The Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks is a testing and reporting toolbox that collects a variety of information about networked hosts and was considered one of the best when written. In fact, it was the first truly user-friendly network scanner...
  
   (co-authored with Venema)
• COPS
  COPS (software)
  COPS was the first common Unix computer system security scanning tool,created by Dan Farmer; Gene Spafford helped him start it in 1989 while Dan was in summer school at Purdue University.-Features:...
  
  
• Titan (co-authored with Brad Powell and Matt Archibald)

External links

• Hackers, episode of NetCafe containing an interview with Dan Farmer