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Ebook498 pages6 hours
CUCKOO'S EGG
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this ebook
Before the Internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive U.S. citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" (Smithsonian).
Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter"—a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases—a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA . . . and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.
Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter"—a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases—a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA . . . and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.
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Reviews for CUCKOO'S EGG
Rating: 4.095414184171598 out of 5 stars
4/5
676 ratings21 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reading this book as a kid is why I ended up in Information Security. Imagine my disappointment.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I loved this. Great fun if your are one of those people who remembers sleeping under your desk to be there when your program finished compiling/linking.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting first-person view of tracking a hacker back to the source back in the early Unix days. Pretty interesting from a historical perspective, although there is a lot of waiting around for something interesting to happen (as the 3-letter agencies sit around doing nothing useful for months).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A fun read and a great history lesson for computer nerds like me.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stoll’s writing does an exceptional job of retelling a story of hacking, espionage, and an international spy hunt. All the while, the author’s humor and internal reflections breath life and personality throughout.This book isn’t technically focused (thankfully the author has a separately published article going over such specifics), which makes this an accessible read for most anyone.I enjoyed that the author took time to be open about their criticisms so federal agencies. It would have been much easier to have gone the safe route of painting them as holistic entities to be trusted by the public.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As well as a gripping techno-thriller, it's also a sweet romance, and includes a great chocolate-chip cookie recipe. Stoll never sets out to be a hero, he's just a problem-solving grad student, who becomes really dedicated to solving one particular problem.
I wonder how dated it seems now? - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading again after 30 years. This true story reads like the best spy thriller fiction. A recent headline (March 2021) warned that some of the important “holes” in the security systems of computers worldwide have still not been plugged.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Entertaining overall story, i just got bit tired of the Stoll's silly whining about different sort of things at the end of the book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I was ready to give THE CUCKOO'S EGG a mere four stars, because this is just not really the kind of book I normally read. But then I decided that wouldn't be fair, or an accurate reflection of how I ended up reading it. Which was nearly nonstop from beginning to end. The book is almost 400 pages long and I read it in less than two days. A jacket blurb says it "reads like a le Carre novel," and it does, no lie. It's that gripping and compelling a read. Except this is a spy thriller that involves no real physical danger to its hero-author, Cliff Stoll. But whodathunk that a narrative that plays out mostly behind a desk, plunking computer keys, could be this exciting? Well, it is; it keeps you turning and turning the pages, 'cause you just can't wait to find out what happens next. Cliff Stoll seems an unlikely hero for an international spy thriller. The guy's an astronomer by training, but also a largely self-taught computer geek, a Berkley hippie sort who doesn't own a car and bikes everywhere. He enjoys cooking, sewing, and Quilting! But the thing is, the guy is cool, very cool. And he's funny too. In the course of the book you learn a little about his relationship with his partner, Martha, which is pretty laid back, unofficial and, well, cool. You also learn quite a lot about the early days of computers and the pre-internet age, when PC's were still something of a novelty and giant mainframe computers ruled. Well, they probably still do. And he also introduces you to the dangers of non-secure computers, how hackers can infiltrate and steal stuff, pretty important stuff in fact. You see how Cliff gradually eases himself from the hippy fringe into the heart of the military industrial complex, accidentally, as it were, just doing his job. Other players are folks from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and lots of DoD contractors too - the whole Beltway bunch and others scattered all over the USA. And, most important of all, Cliff Stoll is a great storyteller, a natural writer. Or, if he's not, he's got me fooled. I know I've 'discovered' this book almost twenty-five years late, but man, is it ever a terrific read! Five-PLUS stars. Highly recommended. Yeah, VERY highly!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The parallels between this and the last book I read 'Against all Enemies' were chilling.
Absolutely fabulous writing...you'd expect - from the subject matter - that this would be as dry as a bone. But it's not. NOT AT ALL!
Sometimes I have trouble following a whodunit. But not here -- it's all laid our it clear, concise lucid writing that Stoll also manages to make engaging through his characters. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cliff Stoll's real-life account in The Cuckoo's Egg belongs in a special category of "Obviously dated books that are still relevant." Computer technology has progressed an unimaginable amount in the past 25 years, and yet the human element here remains timeless. One can follow along easy enough even though the terminology is anachronistic. Some nice moments are the descriptions of what the infant internet looked like before it becomes the global behemoth we recognize today.My only critique is that I feel the book runs too long by at least 100 pages. This story has a natural urgency that isn't helped by the unnecessary length.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Fun and easy read for computer nerds.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A documentary and dramatized book about a hackers group that appeared to sell data to the KGB.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A documentary and dramatized book about a hackers group that appeared to sell data to the KGB.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent true story of the first anti-hacking efforts. A Berkeley liberal realizes that anarchy is not the best policy and drags the government agencies, FBI, CIA, NSA, et. al. kicking and screaming on a chase through cyberspace. Boy am I old! I actually understand and remember all of the computer jargon in this.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fun. Those were the days.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's getting pretty old now but interesting to read as a kind of a history lesson about the basis of network security. The Berkeley hippie discovering he was more concerned about privacy, protecting research and the value of freedom was a hoot!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When you get right down to it, this is a 400-page book about a year-long, painstaking search for an elusive hacker--a "ghost in the network"--two decades ago during the prehistory of the internet. The hero is a man detail-obsessed enough to notice a 75-cent accounting discrepancy and track it back to its source. The story is full of computer technology so old that only aging IT gurus and historians will recognize it. Its tempo reveals what professional investigators (spies, detectives, scientists, historians) have always known and novelists have always glossed over: real-life investigations are full of tedious repetition, dead ends, and false starts. Stoll tells it straight, resisting the urge to inject the artificial drama we've been trained to expect.Four hundred pages of this should be as dull as a thud. Except that it's not . . . it's brilliant, engrossing, and frequently even charming.The credit for this goes entirely to Stoll's easygoing literary voice and his ability to explain just enough of the hardware and software behind his story to make it crystal clear to the non-geek reader. He's an interesting enough character, and he talks about himself so naturally and unassumingly, that even seemingly mundane events become interesting. Stoll is also an astute observer of the world around him, and of his own quirks as well as those of his fellow humans. The book is filled with sharply drawn vignettes of his home life in Berkeley, the computer work he was paid to do, the astronomical research that fed his soul, and the bureaucratic absurdities he encountered while trying to get some law-enforcement agency interested in the hacker he was chasing. In the end, The Cuckoo's Egg works because it's as much a story about people as a story about computers. It has that in common with Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine and Stephen Levy's Hackers, and--like them--it's a classic of the early computer age.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Clifford Stoll had just one great book in him.This is it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fascinating look at the world of hackers and those who track them. This book was extremely well written and kept my attention from start to finish. It should appeal to code monkeys and normal people, as well.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5cool geeky espinoge at the dawn of the information age, and it's all true. a fun ride and a nice snapshot of information at the time. important in understanding How we Got Here.