The Cuckoo’s Egg

Yesterday I finished reading The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. Yes finally I read it! James has been nagging me to read this for years now…literally. I’m not sure why I didn’t read it sooner because it was really very good.

It is the true story of Clifford Stoll, an astronomy academic at Berkeley, California as he follows the exploits of a mysterious hacker using the uni systems to infiltrate military and secret service systems across the USA! The book is quite technical from a normal person’s point of view because it is set in the Jumping Jack Flash / War Games computer age - mid 1980s. Before the internet, before broadband and pretty much before microsoft! Clifford describes everything the hacker does in Unix, Vax, VMS etc commands. He describes what the commands do in the book (obviously i’m no Unix expert) however i can see a non-technical person getting a bit bored or lost…then again would they even be reading this book in the first place?

A very good book. Definitely worth a read. Thankfully James warned me not to read the blurb on the back because it totally gives away the ending of the book!! How stupid is that you book publishing people?! I give this book an 8/10.