The Cuckoo's Egg

Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

Paperback, 416 pages

English language

Published Oct. 3, 2000 by Pocket.

ISBN:
978-0-7434-1146-2
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4 stars (6 reviews)

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage is a 1989 book written by Clifford Stoll. It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Stoll's use of the term extended the metaphor Cuckoo's egg from brood parasitism in birds to malware.

6 editions

Engrossing Read On the History of Cybersecurity Incident Response

4 stars

I've had this book recommended to me personally as well on several lists of "cybersecurity books everyone should read" so I finally got around to reading it.

The story, while slightly repetitive, unfolds in a first person, linear style. I found the book easy to read, and while the cybersecurity ideas presented seems commonplace today, I think they were probably groundbreaking when the book came out.

I found it fascinating that Cliff's use of a logbook, external monitoring systems, a pager, a very early form of a "canary token," and a few other technical ideas are still in use today. (OK, maybe not the pager exactly but lots of IT people get text alerts on their phones!)

His inability to get any help from the 3 Letter Federal Agencies was not surprising. It took 9/11 to fix some of those communication problems (but not all from what I understand).

Anyways, …

Great introduction to information security: spies, philosophy, and so much more.

5 stars

This book is an excellent introduction to hacking. It's great for beginners as it explains concepts on a fundamental level. It asks moral questions surrounding information security and who protects users. It is also a great starting point for people who need to see the picture of their learning or are struggling with being interested in learning about information security.

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Subjects

  • Computer fraud & hacking
  • Espionage & secret services
  • True crime
  • True Crime / Espionage
  • Germany
  • Espionage, Soviet
  • Stoll, Clifford
  • Fiction
  • Internet - Security
  • Hannover
  • Espionage
  • General
  • Computers : Internet - Security
  • Literary Criticism & Collections / General
  • Literary Criticism : General
  • United States
  • Databases
  • Defense information, Classified
  • Hess, Markus

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