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In 1995, Farmer and Wietse Venema (a Dutch programmer and physicist) developed a second vulnerability scanner called the Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (SATAN). Due to a misunderstanding of SATAN's capabilities, when it was first published, some network administrators and law enforcement personnel believed that hackers would use it to identify and break into vulnerable computers. Consequently, SGI terminated Farmer's employment.[2] 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.[3] Within a few years, the use of vulnerability scanners such as SATAN became an accepted method for auditing computer and network security.
Farmer and Venema collaborated again to develop a computer forensics suite called The Coroner's Toolkit, and later coauthored Forensic Discovery (2005), a book about computer forensics.[5]
Farmer co-founded Elemental Security with Dayne Myers, and served as the corporation's chief technical officer.
References
^Gibbs, W. W. (1997) Profile: Dan Farmer – From Satan to Zen, Scientific American276(4), 32-34.