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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The Cuckoo's Egg

15:03 / 12.10.07

I was surprised I couldn't find a thread for this! Great read, part of teh histry of teh innanets! The dead, dead, dead My Tiny Life thread made me think of it...

A true crime thriller and network security primer rolled into one, Stoll's 1990 book is the anti-Neuromancer, a story about dorks with real computers.

Before I read this book, my entire mental picture of computer hacking consisted of jumbled images from Snow Crash , the aforementioned Neuromancer, and Hackers star Johnny Lee Miller ("You wanted to know who I am, Zero Cool? Well, let me explain the New World Order. Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are Samurai... the Keyboard Cowboys... and all those other people who have no idea what's going on are the cattle... Moooo.").

Stoll keeps it real but his detective work is almost playful - no one takes seriously his report of an intruder on Berkeley's network, so he takes it upon himself to monitor the attacker, poring over miles of printouts in his free time and letting his life fall apart. Stoll is a patient and funny teacher and the book flies by. Written in 1990, and people are STILL picking guessable passwords!

16:02 / 12.10.07

Cracking book. I read it some years back, but even then I remember thinking the views of those involved were incredibly naive. I guess hacking had yet to hit the mainstream. IIRC it had a great balance between technical details of the tracking, whilst still keeping up the pace, something that many other books on hackers have failed to capture.

If you enjoyed that, you might also be interested in Steven Levy's Hackers, which mostly covers the early MIT days of 'hacking' in the original sense. John Markoff also wrote a book called Cyberpunk which covered the same story as The Cuckoo's Egg, but largely from the side of the hackers, particularly their meetings with the KGB who they attempted to sell information to. Markoff's book also covers Robert Morris' Internet worm and the early days of Kevin Mitnick.

However, the best of all books on hackers are the two written by Jonathan Littman covering Kevin Poulsen and Kevin Mitnick. Winning Porches by rigging Radio phone-ins to be the 100th caller, disconnecting the US Crimewatch Telephone number after the show aired to prevent people from calling in, eavesdropping on the journalists, police and FBI tracking them... basically, you name it, they did it.

12:08 / 19.10.07

I recently reread this one after finding a copy at a used book store (the first read was courtesy of the local library in a time when most people were still on BBSs). I'd have to say it didnt age well. the writing was so stiff that I couldnt really get into it. Also, Stoll's girlfriend came across as The Worlds Biggest Drag.

I read (a while back... should I worry?) the Markoff Mitnick book and this thread has me kind of wanting to read all the other ones mentioned... thanks a LOT, all. ;-)