The Cuckoo's Egg

This is my first post that directly addresses a requirement from my CS 404 class.

We were required to read a book that details Dr. Clifford Stoll's story about tracking German hacker Markus Hess titled The Cuckoo's Egg. It is a true account, taken for the most part from Dr. Stoll's personal notes written during the events of the story. After reading, we report on it and record our thoughts.

As I started reading the story, I was curious as to why I hadn't heard the story before. It was interesting to realize that the story took place (and was written) during the 1980s, making it the earliest account I've ever heard (or read) of hacking. Before reading, I already had started comparing it to the works of hacker Kevin Mitnick that I've read (The Art of Deception, The Art of Intrusion, and his auto-biography Ghost in the Wires). It was different from these stories, especially because it was written from the perspective of the lawful instead of the lawless, but I enjoyed it almost as much.

I enjoyed the story. It is quite fascinating, especially for someone who understands some of the more technical details of how the hacker was able to get in and how Stoll was able to defend against Hess's attempts to get classified information. Most interesting to me was Stoll's transformation during the story from someone who might not have cared so much about hacking and had a distaste for government organizations to someone who began to want to protect personal privacy and had to work with these same organizations (and encourage an increase in their involvement in people's lives). I feel that this transformation is similar to the transformation experienced by former students from an extremely liberal group to one that is more conservative upon experiencing life from a different standpoint.

My personal thoughts on hacking and cryptography are slightly different from Dr. Stoll's (at least as they are expressed in the story). I feel that it should be legal to try to gain access to a computer, but that private information should be private, and no destruction should occur. Unfortunately, it is so hard to police this, and perhaps harder to stop once access is gained. Upon gaining access to a private system, the temptation is to see what is available, but to me this is personal data. Also unfortunately, I can't really suggest a solution where breaking into a computer is legal and the rest isn't, but ideally (to me) that would be the case.

I also feel, however, that the race between people who try to protect information and people who try to access it is a waste of valuable time. Stoll does mention this slightly in his book, in that he personally had to sacrifice time doing things for people in protecting his system against Hess. As a result, I have a vision of a world where this protection (and the race) is not necessary. This would mean that all information would be accessible. This would also mean that anyone could access anyone's financial accounts.

I don't know how this could be implemented, but I think if we were to spend time trying to bring it to pass, it could happen.