Review: The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

The good

Very fun read about chasing hackers… Including deep-dives on how to monitor the hacker (printing their sessions on… paper… seriously), actual scenes of tracing calls (“keep him on the line, we’ve almost got him!”), and run-ins with the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
Written in 1989, it’s a wonderful throwback to an era when the Internet and email had just started to appear. Amazing to see how many of the technologies and decisions from more than 30 years ago are still with us: lots of fun chatter about Unix, vim, emacs, telnet, ps, viruses, worms, password management, superusers, privilege escalation, and so on.
Good writing. An impressive mix of spy thriller and nerdy programming concepts (explained for non tech audiences via clear analogies).
Interesting insights about how the government agencies didn’t used to take hacking seriously (FBI, CIA, NSA basically ignored it) and how diversity in the computing system (i.e., different operating systems, networks, etc) protects it, as a single vulnerability or flaw won’t affect them all (similar to the protection provided by biological diversity).

The not so good

Somewhat weird, slightly underwhelming ending. Not that the outcome wasn’t crazy, but after all the excitement of the chase, the finale wasn’t as satisfying as it should’ve been.
The ending also had an odd part where the author wishes people wouldn’t hack, wouldn’t attack computers, wouldn’t exploit vulnerabilities, etc. Given all that he had seen, that seems a bit naive, and about as effective as wishing people wouldn’t steal or do other crimes in the real world. The reality is that this stuff will happen, and as computers carry more and more valuable information, it’ll only happen more and more often… If we’re going to spend time wishing for anything, we should wish for the knowledge and ability to create more secure systems.

Overall

A delightful read. Highly recommended to any programmer and anyone in the tech industry.

Rating: 5 stars