The Cuckoo's Egg
A 75-cent accounting error that led to the KGB
Cliff Stoll, an astronomer managing computers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, was asked to resolve a 75-cent discrepancy in the accounting system that billed users for machine time. The unbilled time belonged to an account that should not have existed.
Rather than close it, Stoll watched. Over the following months he traced an intruder moving from Berkeley into military and defence contractor systems across the United States, hand-logging sessions on printers and eventually setting a fabricated document trap to hold the connection long enough to trace it. The intruder was Markus Hess, operating from Hanover in West Germany and selling what he found to the KGB.
The first documented case of computer intrusion as espionage, and the origin of much of what became incident response: patient observation, meticulous logging, and the deception operation.
The Hacker Chronicles
Volume One — Origins
This page is the summary. The chapter — ‘The Cuckoo's Egg’ — follows the case properly: what was known at the time, who decided what, and how it actually unfolded rather than how it was later retold.
Two more volumes this year.
Going Geopolitical in October, Going Strategic in December.
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