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--- the_cuckoo_s_egg_book [2026/06/26 08:12] – created reidjs
+++ the_cuckoo_s_egg_book [2026/06/28 10:07] (current) – reidjs
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 Written by Cliff Stoll, an astrophysicist from Berkeley.
-While working as a system admin at the Berkeley Lawrence lab, he notices a small accounting error in their computer time/usage. While trying to diagnose the underlying issue, he discovers a highly sophisticated computer hacker has been using their network to gain access to scientific, military, and government networks.
+While working as a system admin at the Berkeley Lawrence lab, he notices a small accounting error in their computer time/usage. While trying to diagnose the underlying issue, he discovers a highly sophisticated foreign computer hacker/spy-ring has been using their network to gain access to scientific, military, and government networks.
- which leads him to work with high level government agencies (NSA, CIA, FBI, etc)
+A fun read, fast-paced, good humor, and entertaining for anyone interested in computer networks, IT, and hacking.
+I relate to the author/protagonist Cliff, considering I have taken a similar career path from astronomy to IT. I was drawn to astronomy because it is so objective, so non-confrontational and passive, highly interesting and all-encompassing but simultaneously completely useless.
+The book raises some interesting questions about the ethics of hacking. Is it an invasion of the data owner's privacy and should be punished similar to breaking into their home, or is there no right to privacy when you connect your machine to a network? Most people probably agree that reading the contents of someone else's computer, assuming they expect it to be private, even if they don't secure it especially well, should be illegal, but in the early days of computers and the Internet this was not exactly taken for granted. Many people believed that all information online should be free and available for everyone, but it hasn't really panned out that way.
+Fun quote:
+"Sometimes you get the elevator. Sometimes you get the shaft"