Cyber Reads: The Cuckoo's Egg
Just another astronomer turns into the first cybersecurity superhero story
Although there are plenty of excellent books on cybersecurity, they are almost never thought of as genuine “can’t put it down” page turners. ‘The Cuckoo’s Egg’ is one of the very rare exceptions to this rule. It’s riveting and draws you in immediately on the first page - with the astronomer / author Cliff Stoll being transferred to the basement computer center at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
The story unfolds back in the 1980s, a time when the internet was in its infancy, with very little beyond military, governmental, and academic organizations connected to any part of it. Our superhero is a hippy astronomer and the villain is a skillful hacker/attacker based in Germany who is part of what we would now call a motivated adversary group, looking to gain access to and steal highly sensitive data from US military and government entities.
An excerpt from the Amazon description of the book offers a far better feel for the power of the story than I can manage.
Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter" -- a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases -- a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA...and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.
One of the most impressive things about the book is that the methods used by Cliff Stoll to track down the attacker are still effective and a good fit for cybersecurity threat intel and investigations today.
It turns out that Cliff Stoll’s story telling talent isn’t just found on written pages; he is a wonderful and hyper animated public speaker. This video of his talk at a SANS event is massively entertaining and fun to watch:
I dare you to try to avoid laughing even if you just watch 10 minutes of this.
You can buy ‘The Cuckoo’s Egg’ at Amazon in Kindle, paperback, hard cover and audible formats.