This is a story of a young astronomer who was ignoring his proper job and playing with computers too much, who discovered some alarming hacking into US defence computers and decided to track down the culprits.
Stoll is a persistent thoughful and imaginative investigator and occasionally puts his scientific training to good use, for example when he theorises on the location of the hackers based on their network latency.
I found this utterly enthralling, and it is the only book where I have literally read it through from start to finish unable to put it down, which in my case meant getting to bed at 5.30 in the morning.
As well as a fascinating story of hacking and detection, the book contains wry anecdotes of the total gulf between Unix, VMS and Apple Mac users. Although the story is 10 years old, these attitudes still prevail to this day. And of course Unix still RULES!!!!
The age of the story is revealed when a mini-computer is described as being powerful because it musters 10 MIPS. These days that won't support a mail program :-)
The book also relates in intimate detail the dreadful buck-passing that went on for months before the US powers finally did something.
Interspersed with the main story are some bits and pieces of Stoll's own life and this reader found it a little sad how he devoted so much time to catching the hackers whilst fully aware that his girlfriend was missing him at home, and then in a wistful series of postscripts we learn they split up - perhaps there was some connection.
This is the best of all of these books on computer crime - a must!
Books : The Cuckoo's Egg | Takedown | Hackers
Last update February 17 1999