I remember 20 years ago, I was going to second-hand bookshops with my dad and we were looking for a book together. A book so hard to find that I only managed to find it after twenty years. It was published in English, German, and even Czech. I don't speak German, so that left me with Czech and English, but it was quite difficult to find it in both languages, until I finally found it.onec we managed to get hold of the Czech version, which was translated in 1997 by Petr Štěpán. The book is called The Cuckoo's Egg and was written in 1995 by Clifford Stoll. In the Czech translation you can find it under the title Cuckoo's Egg: A True Story of a Spy Hunt in a Maze of Computer Networks. When the book was published, it was so shocking and interesting at the time that it was a bestseller for four long months New York Times. Of course, this was also largely due to the time it was published, because in 1995 the word Hacker was associated with an almost mythical being who moved somewhere on the fringes of society and was, for most people, something between a genius, a madman, a criminal and an anarchist all rolled into one.
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The most interesting thing about the whole book is that its author is not a fiction writer, but a man who describes in his book real events that happened to him when an unknown attacker attacked large servers in Berkeley. The events are so interesting that even though the book is quite technical, it is written like a detective novel and can be read practically by itself. Of course, I will not give away the plot, but the very beginning is amazing. In 1986, at a time when computers are still only in the largest and most modern companies in the world and universities or laboratories, Cliff Stoll works at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Originally an astronomer, but since the university has no work for him, he is transferred to computer administration. One day, Cliff gets a ridiculous task: to find out why $0,75 is missing from the computer accounting. Yes, it really is the amount of 75 cents, from which the first described hacker hunt in the world begins. When Cliff finds out that behind the problem nestWhether it's an accounting error or a flaw in the system itself, things will start to happen that will create a story that will make this book a best-seller in the US for months to come.
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Of course, it is necessary to take into account that the story takes place since 1986 and you will encounter things such as modems, telephone lines and terminals, as well as commands in the command lines of systems that have not existed for decades. However, it is all the more fascinating to look into the world of hackers at the very beginning of the computer age. Into a world when hacking was completely different. When hacking meant being smarter than those on the other end of the screen. And it is precisely such a person that Stoll goes after in his book, or rather in his life. If you are interested in the story and you know English, try Ebay, where you can find the book here and there, I have only discovered it in Czech once and we are glad that I have it at home after twenty years. However, I believe that with today's technologies you will also be able to find it within a few months.
