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Book Review: The Cuckoo’s Egg

I recently finished “The Cuckoo’s Egg”, by Clifford Stoll. It was a fascinating non-fiction book exploring the foundations of computer security in a personable format.

The setting is the mid 1980s. The author discovers something weird on his academic computer system. There’s an unexplained charge of 75 cents. He digs deeper, discovers that someone who’s left the university is logging in.

After further investigation, he discovers that the user who is logging in is an intruder. After discussing the situation with his boss, he gets three weeks to find out who they are. He figures that’s plenty of time.

The investigation ends up taking a year.

It also extends far beyond his academic systems, both in scope and effort. Stoll talks to numerous government agencies and private organizations, letting them know they’ve been attacked and getting their assistance tracing the hacker. He sleeps under his desk. He rigs up a pager so that he can know which accounts the hacker is using. Stoll sets up printers so that every word the hacker types is recorded, unbeknownst to him.

It’s quite the tale. As someone who has worked with software for years, I really appreciated the historical nature of it. When I became aware of the internet, in my youth, some of the groups and communities he mentions were still around; I remember reading and posting to usenet. But many of the systems were before my time. I’ve never touched a computer running VMS, for instance.

But, for all the history, the people problems were the same: users not changing passwords, system managers not locking their software down, bureaucrats happy to take information but not willing to share. Let’s just say, mistakes were made.

I also enjoyed the author’s interspersal of lived experiences. We don’t simply follow one computer nerd tracking another. We also learn about milkshakes, parties in San Francisco, curry nights and his first experience with the microwave. While some phrases and analogies are repeated (“should we thank someone who goes to a little town and robs people to illustrate they should lock their doors” pops up at least twice), in general the book is pretty readable. Stoll’s personal stories and musings help that readability immensely.

All in all, a great book if you are interested in the history of computing or modern security practices. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out a paper he wrote based on the same experience for ACM.