The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll, is a fascinating book that shows that truth is really stranger than fiction. When reading this book I found myself wondering the same things that Cliff did and felt the same frustration and excitement the chase must have brought to him. What does a cuckoo’s egg have to do with computers? How does a $0.75 accounting discrepancy lead to the KGB? And I asked myself how does an astronomer turned systems manager catch a computer hacker? When Cliff was transferred to the Lawrence Berkley Lab computer lab he had no idea that there was a cuckoo’s egg hiding in his nest (network) that would eventually hatch not just in his computers but into a cat and mouse chase that would lead from Berkley to Virgina to Mitre (a Network Service Contractor) to numerous military bases not just in the United states, but around the world, to eventually Hannover, Germany and consume most of his life for over a year. His live in girlfriend and eventually wife Martha a Law student at Berkley, had her own frustrations along the way when Cliff’s obsession with the hacker by way of a Cliff’s overnight campouts under his desk and a pager set to transmit Morse code that invaded their home, special occasions, bedroom, and even shower. This hacker used many names Svetek, Hunter, and numerous others that were either stolen by way of a program planted by the hacker or new users the hacker created after aquiring systems privileges. The passwords he used for these new accounts said much about his persona and meticulous nature. They were either a location combined with hack or things a little more personal such as ones that identified the brand of cigarettes he smoked, Benson and Hedges. Cliff’s main frustration that seemed to leap off of the page and into my own mind was the lack of support and willingness to investigate from the ‘F’ entity, the FBI as well as the numerous other three and four letter acronym agencies that continually passed the buck to one another if they did anything at all. “Unless there is a monetary loss or damage costing a substantial amount, we can’t do anything,” is what Cliff was told. What these agencies didn’t or wouldn’t understand is that something else was being stolen and damaged, something that if lost would be more detrimental than a monetary loss, the disintegration of trust and privacy that at the time was the core ideal for the sharing of information in the early forms of the internet. And when he found a hole in a system that the hacker snuck through he was told, “We make secure computers.” And when agencies did eventually open up to the idea and start to help it was all road blocked by the ‘F’ entity. Even with the lack of help it didn’t stop Cliff from tracking and documenting all the hackers’ moves in his log book. And when the powers that be, as far as Cliff was concerned at LBL wanted to shut down the “hacker” operation he threw up a Hail-Mary to the DOE arguing that the hacker was stealing power. This kept him up and running.
Then when Cliff least expected it all the agencies that had turned a blind eye to his requests for help. The “spooks” not only gave him the support he had been asking for, but asked him to speak at their agencies. All of a sudden after Cliff had done all the work for them, to find the hacker, they wanted to know how cliff had tracked him and all the systems holes that were exploited.
Phone trace after phone trace, no warrants because of lack of communication between the FBI to the FBI liaison in Germany, to the Bundesposts’, “we can’t make a move until we get the warrants” Cliff watched in utter frustration as “Sventek” waltzed in and out of his network stealing usernames, changing passwords, copying files and user directories. Finally the agencies uncrossed their lines and were ready to pounce on the mouse; the mouse went into hiding only peeking out of the hole to check on the nest. Enter “operation showerhead” this Boris and Natasha brand super spy plan hatched by Martha and Cliff to keep the hacker in the open long enough to catch by giving him the type of top secret stuff he was looking for by creating false documents and memos from an imaginary bumbling secretary for SDINET Barbara Sherwin. When the hacker was eventually traced to a small computer company and the apartment of one of their employees and the Hannover police raided both, it was a relief to Cliff, but there were still so many questions unanswered. What was the hacker’s name? What was he up to? What happened to him? None of the agencies that he had lead to the hacker were saying anything.
The answers finally came after Cliff explained his findings in a press conference. The reporters did their homework and called Germany and found out what Cliff never could. The who’s? and why’s? The who was Markus Hess a computer programmer from Hannover, Germany during the day he worked at the small computer company and at night first as a hobby of sorts he wandered through the Mitre and into “unclassified” files. That was until getting caught up in the chaos computer club, and one of who’s members had an addiction to cocaine and connections with the KGB that gave him money and drugs in exchange for information which explains the why.
While reading this book I was able to feel the story’s highs, lows, and frustrations and learned a lot about the beginnings information sharing and networking. Also the footnotes at the bottom of pages helped my understanding of many concepts and gave me a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This book was entertaining and informative.