| Privately Held | |
| Industry | computer software |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Malden, Massachusetts, United States |
Key people | James VanBokkelen, Simson Garfinkel |
| Products | NetIntercept PhoneSweep |
| Website | www.sandstorm.net |
Sandstorm Enterprises was an American computer security software vendor founded in 1998 by Simson Garfinkel, James van Bokkelen, Gene Spafford, [1] Dan Geer. In January 2010, it was purchased by NIKSUN, Inc. [2]
Simson L. Garfinkel is the US Census Bureau's Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access. Previously, he was a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2015-2017) and, prior to that, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California (2006-2015). In addition to his research, Garfinkel is a journalist, an entrepreneur, and an inventor; his work is generally concerned with computer security, privacy, and information technology.
Eugene Howard Spafford, commonly known as Spaf, is an American professor of computer science at Purdue University and a leading computer security expert.
Dan Geer is a computer security analyst and risk management specialist. He is recognized for raising awareness of critical computer and network security issues before the risks were widely understood, and for ground-breaking work on the economics of security.
Sandstorm was located in the greater Boston area. Sandstorm's major products were PhoneSweep, the first [3] commercial multi-line telephone scanner (a war dialer), introduced in 1998, and NetIntercept, a commercial network forensics tool, introduced in 2001. Designed as a second-generation network analysis tool, NetIntercept operated primarily at the level of TCP and UDP data streams and application-layer objects they transport. [3] [4]
War dialing or wardialing, a.k.a. "janning", is a technique to automatically scan a list of telephone numbers, usually dialing every number in a local area code to search for modems, computers, bulletin board systems and fax machines. Hackers use the resulting lists for various purposes: hobbyists for exploration, and crackers – malicious hackers who specialize in breaching computer security – for guessing user accounts, or locating modems that might provide an entry-point into computer or other electronic systems. It may also be used by security personnel, for example, to detect unauthorized devices, such as modems or faxes, on a company's telephone network.
In 2002 Sandstorm purchased LanWatch, a commercial packet-oriented LAN monitor originally developed by FTP Software. LanWatch was sold a separate product, but much of its functionality was used by NetIntercept to display individual packets.
FTP Software was a software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey, Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen, Dave Bridgham and several other founding shareholders. Their main product was PC/TCP, a full-featured, standards-compliant TCP/IP package for DOS.
As of 2019, the PhoneSweep product is still sold and supported by NIKSUN. Core parts of the NetIntercept product also still exist, as incorporated into NIKSUN's own NetDetector network forensics product line.
