The Cuckoo’s Egg.
Recently read the nonfiction book The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll. Not sure where I actually found the book, but it’s definitely an interesting read, despite dating from 1989. The book details Mr Stoll’s experiences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he signed on as an astronomer, but worked also at a Unix systems administrator in the IT department. One day in managing his systems he noticed some anomalies, and over a short period of time, identified what he believed to be a hacker in his system. From there the trail simply kept getting more complex and weirder by the month. Despite the age of the book I won’t spoil it for you – if you are a nerdy type (or like a long, drawn out mystery) – this is it. And it’s hard to believe in some parts of the book that this is an actual true story, given what happens to Cliff’s quest and interactions with his boss, the government, and others who become involved.
Other things about the book I found interesting include all the computer talk – reading this book is like taking a trip down memory lane, although much of what he’s working on here predates my use of computers too, really. The Mac had barely appeared at this stage (we were using them for Biology lab graphs and statistical testing during my college experience at this time) and as noted in the book, the other predominant system was the Digital VAX (our computer lab had them too) – PC’s were even newer than the Mac at this point. The level of detail and monitoring he had to engage in to track the hacker kind of boggles my mind – but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.
It’s also neat to read a bit of the NoCal lifestyle he was living at the time (he lived near Berkeley, didn’t have a car, rode his bike everywhere, lived with his girlfriend and another woman, and generally had a ‘free range’ lifestyle probably considered stereotypically Californian, especially when looking back. Rough. 🙂 But it sounds like despite the nauseating end of the Reagan years at the time, it was a fun time to live near and work at Berkeley.
Cliff’s interaction with govt. agencies in numerous cases I suspect is a dramatic difference than it would be today, and that’s sad. While I suspect many of them have the same ‘do right by the American people’ sense of justice they did back then – many others sadly do NOT, that’s patently obvious, even if 9-11 hadn’t dramatically accelerated the process while doubling down on privacy invasions and creating a long-term police state mentality from which we have yet to recover. Very, very sad and alarming.
But finally – Cliff himself is interesting. His mental struggles with what was going on, why or why not it was important to continue, and his long-term quest to figure things out through multiple creative means are engaging and often amusing to follow. And he persists in many cases on simple naivete and curiosity – while maintaining a healthy skepticism and sense of right and wrong. But he keeps a dogged focus on his objective and a positive attitude despite many obstacles, and that’s probably why we’re reading about the story instead of having suffered some dramatic consequence instead.
Piqued your interest? Check out the book!
candybowl
Tags: 80s, computers, hacker, malevolence, military, spy, technology