Fantastic Book !! A Fascinating story, especially to those people tha love computers (just like me, he he). It shows how the Unix Operating System stills the backbone of the Net. I hardly recomend it !!

I have read Shimomura's "TakeDown" and I like Stoll's way of presenting the case a bit "down to earth" than Shimomura.
This book is a fairly easy read and can be finished on a long flight.

I particulary felt the pain he went through when he tried to contact government agencies about computer theft before it was deemed a crime. Red tape is prevalent all over the world.

A must-read if you are interested in hacking, computer networks, phone networks. It reads like a "who-dun-it".

The Cuckoo's Egg is an exciting look at how computer hackers were originally traced before the world of Windows, firewall and antivirus software, and public concern for computer privacy really came of age. Clifford Stoll recounts his work in tracking down a computer hacker that was breaking into the computer systems at the University of California - Berkeley and several other locations. The book delivers t in technical detail, but the social aspects of chasing a computer hacker are where I found the value and where I think you will too.

Clifford Stoll is the typical liberal student-turned-citizen of the Berkeley, California area. Working at the college he originally sets out to work on astronomy (a true passion of his) and ends up finding a glitch in a Unix accounting log and chasing a hacker across the world (from the safety of his desk). Cliff cannot do it alone though; he must meet and become friends with people that he at first refers to as "spooks", the NSA, FBI, and CIA. This comes as much surprise to his girlfriend and housemate, who think Cliff is going insane. Stoll also has to deal with telephone companies and military contractors, convincing big businesses that this computer hacker is causing real damage on supposedly "secure" systems. Stoll details his hunt that lasted almost a year and delivers a great true story that should be required for anyone interested in joining the world of computer security.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in the Unix operating system, modern "computer geeks" using Linux or Windows, a former Berkeley student, technology enthusiast, or longs for the "old" days of computing before the World Wide Web came around. It's not the words on the page that really matter, it's what Clifford Stoll makes you think about your computer networks security that gives the book it's true value. If you fall into the recommended categories, definitely read the book.

I bought this book because it was refenced in a book I was using for a computer course in college. The idea of the story sparked some interest, so I purchesed it. I read the entire book in a day, and I never read. I could not put it down. The story isn't necesarilly so perfectly written that I could not pull myself from it, rather it was the fact that everything was real. It amazed me that "hackers" were up to the tricks and methods that are still used today. I say "hackers" because really they (or the media) have hijaked the term.

Anyway, I don't want to give out too much about the story, but if you think you would like this story, you will. Especially if you have knowledge of Unix or VAC systems. Ah, nostalgia. And even if you don't know about those systems, it will give you a good idea of where computers have come from.

I give it 5 stars due to its very nature: a true story that has step-by-step documentation to back everything up.

This tells of the reconciling of a 75 cent bookkeeping discrepancy that ultimately led to an intruder who broke into the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in order to break into classified military systems. Cliff writes with a 'stream of consciousness' style that would be faster reading with a more concise style. [Is this a bureaucratic style?] The book describes the lifestyle of University serfs: eating a lot of pizza, bicycling around, living with friends, and sewing quilts. The big event of the year seems to be dressing up for a Halloween parade in San Francisco.

This book lacks a Table of Contents and an Index. This is worth reading as a slow-paced real detective story; it is unlike fictional detective stories. One lesson is the care needed when talking over a phone line (the "F" entity). Were his comments on an uncaring Federal bureaucracy echoed in the aftermath reports of 9/11/? The personal activities of Cliff and his friends show them to be 'dedicated followers of fashion' who imagine themselves to be radically original. [Some of this was done decades earlier.] American telephones are computer controlled so they are easy to trace.

Cliff was asked about the "adiabatic lapse rate on Jupiter". This wasn't "by chance", but a test of his bona fides (Chapter 45). Chapter 47 explains how to decrypt Unix passwords from dictionary words. Plodding through this book was tedious to me; he could have been more concise. Cliff claims the problem with viruses is they destroy trust, as he was later questioned about a virus. That was a sort of left-hand compliment, or hidden jealousy IMO. My advice is: trust no one.