Cuckoo's Egg

While reading the Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll, I was very impressed by his persistence. I think that I would have given up after all the times missing the hacker. I probably would have stopped my pursuit after my managers told me to stop. I admire him for continuing to follow the hacker even though his work did not seem to be amounting to much. One of the things I was most impressed with was his diligent record keeping. Later in the book he was told that there had been other situations with hackers, but that his was different because of how well he documented the hacker's actions. His careful notes and printouts were the key in getting governmental authorities to even have interest. This has caused me to be more diligent in keeping my own logbook. It was also very interesting to read his story because it happened so long ago and the technologies he references are so old. He also was working at a time when internet security was not really important to the government. I kept thinking of how differently the three-letter agencies would act today. I don't think the hacker would have made it into nearly as many databases as he did before being caught. I don't even think that it would have taken Cliff to find the hacker before the government knew he was there. It is also interesting to think that the agencies handle hackers the way they do today partly because of Cliff Stoll. This was a very interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone.