
The Cuckoo's Egg - whalesalad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg
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gmiller123456
This is the only book I've read in a single sitting. I started at about 5p one
day, and finished about 7am the next day. I seriously couldn't put it down.
What's great about this book vs. a book like "Takedown" is the author doesn't
pretend that he's a mastermind for being able to track down a criminal. He is
quite humble and candid telling the story. I read the book probabaly 20 years
ago, but one candid incident still pops into my head occasionally and always
makes me smile. It's the time when his shoes were wet, but he had to meet with
an FBI agent, so he put them in the microwave to dry, when the FBI agent
arrived, he asked if there was a tire factory near by. Kinda sticks with me as
there used to be a rubber factory near where I lived that had a pretty bad
smell.

~~~
newaccoutnas
Same here, I read it all one Sunday.. couldn't put it down.

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GauntletWizard
The Cuckoo's egg is a must read for anyone persuing a career in Devops or
Security - It covers such a wide range of debugging techniques and ways to
track down unusual behavior, that it's still a relevant read and great primer.
The early anecdote about 'mirroring' the typing if his hacker by hooking up
line printers to phone lines is particularly ingenious - using `tee` as a tool
for the same effect has saved my hide many a time, and helped me understand
complex systems. Introspecting median output is great tool (see also printf
debugging).

On a different note, Cliff Stoll is himself a great dude, fun and witty and
very friendly. I bought a Klein bottle[1] from him as a present for my father,
who loves it, but the real treat was for me - I went in person, and he gladly
took an hour of his time to show me his warehouse and custom robot he uses to
manage it, and chatted about everything - Life, The Universe, his book and his
business and software problems (I was at a videoconferencing startup, and he'd
also done some work with telcos that proved relevant and illuminating). If you
have a chance, buy a bottle and have a chat.

[1][http://www.kleinbottle.com/](http://www.kleinbottle.com/)

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justanother
In the mid-1990s, I corresponded briefly with Cliff, and he seemed amicable
enough; The one thing I recall from our emails is that he was adamant that he
didn't persecute 'hackers', apparently pursuing a semantic split between
'hacker' and 'cracker'.

I talked a lot with Hans Hubner as well afterward when he worked at Art+COM, a
good bit more than Cliff. I found Hans to be extremely generous, the sort of
guy who was just flattered that you sought him out and would literally create
an account on his Unix and VMS hosts if you just asked, despite the expensive
metered rate he was paying for TCP/IP access at the time. He didn't talk much
about the whole Cuckoo's Egg saga though.

Very nice people on both sides; Makes you wonder how much of it was
circumstance.

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gabrielblack
"The book was chronicled in an episode of WGBH’s NOVA entitled “The KGB, the
Computer, and Me”, which aired on PBS stations on October 3, 1990"

I think it's this one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKxaq1FTac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKxaq1FTac)

Oh,me I'm ROFL: an actor is identical to one of X-Files "Lone Gunmen". When he
explains the beeper to his wife I needed the oxygen. It's like "Doctor Who vs
hackers" :-)

~~~
gabrielblack
Debugging of networks with logic analyzer, counting round trip with the
oscilloscope's divisions, what glorious times ! :-)

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frereubu
I highly recommend this book. It's easily accessible, fun to watch the story
spin out, and recalls the magic of early UNIX and dial-up internet. Cliff
Stoll is quite a character - check out his TED talk to see what I mean.

~~~
jhbadger
"Early UNIX". Ouch. The events of the book took place in 1986, at which time
UNIX was more or less like what we use today. Except for the absence of modern
scripting languages, a modern user could use UNIX from 1986 with very little
problem. I tend to think of "early UNIX" as things like V6 UNIX from the
1970s, but to be fair to you, much more time has passed from 1986 to now than
did from the dawn of UNIX to 1986.

~~~
frereubu
Fair point - as you say I was thinking more of the relative lengths of time
before and after the events in the book happened (at least in my limited
knowledge), but your interpretation of "early" is probably the one that most
people would go with first.

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opwieurposiu
I can still remember watching the NOVA episode of this in the early 90's

[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61qlf6](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61qlf6)

