Last Updated on December 4, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla
It’s an old book but I’ve found that it is still very relevant today. It’s Cliff Stoll’s “The Cuckoo’s Egg”..
Stoll was an Astronomy Professor at Berkley who was put in charge of the computer department. He noticed a 75 cent discrepancy in the billing. As he investigated, he found that a hacker was using the school’s system to break into some of the most sensitive computer installations in the county.
The book is written as a novel. It’s fairly easy reading for most people. One of the really important aspects of the book is the techniques that enabled the hacker to succeed: Default passwords, unpatched systems, social engineering etc. Cliff puts the techniques into a wholly understandable format.
It’s been about 3 decades since his experience. However, I still go out to businesses today and find that they have many of the vulnerabilities that Stoll described. Hackers are still out there exploiting those vulnerabilities..
Once you’ve read the book, you might want to check out some audio clips of a Stoll speech.. They can be found at http://town.hall.org/radio/University/Stoll/
So, grab a copy of the Cuckoo’s egg and take it to the beach with you. It probably won’t attract the opposite sex for conversation, but it will give you a crash course in systems security.
UPDATE Dec 2017 – The recent equifax hack highlighted the fact that the same methods still work 30 years later. Equifax had one of their systems ‘secured’ with admin/admin