the Cuckoo's Egg

securityops culture

Cliff Stoll's 1986 hunt for a hacker that began with a 75-cent accounting error.

An astronomer turned sysadmin at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Stoll noticed a tiny billing discrepancy and traced it to an intruder selling stolen military data to the KGB, ultimately identifying Markus Hess in Germany. His book is a foundational text of intrusion detection and one of the first real accounts of digital counter-espionage.

Also known as: Cliff Stoll, Markus Hess, the 75-cent hack

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