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Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

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Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#81

Post by CliffStoll »

xyzelement wrote: post #36

It's been a few years - and I guess decades - since I read Cliff's book. One thing I recall is his journey from a Berkeley hippie to a man dealing with the military and men in suits and realizing that they are also good and necessary people. And also becoming a family man if I remember correctly. It's a really important part of the story in my mind of Cliff growing up - sort of - as part of the experience.

Yes, Xyz, you got it right. I started out as an apolitical Berkeley techie (not exactly a hippie) and came to realize that the government and, yes, the military were necessary and important to preserve the community that I was living in. It's easy to scribble "Stop the CIA" on Berkeley stop-signs; but who's going to inform our government about what's happening in the world? I did a lot of growing-up during that chase.

As Bob Segar said, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#82

Post by Qwuke »

Sorrel47 wrote: post #43

The Cuckoo's Egg is still one of the best security books ever written. Glad he's still around.

It's the first book I read about computer history and made me interested in tech, a career I love doing every day :) this talk made me very happy.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#83

Post by ozim »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #4

I watch a lot of videos at 1.5x. Older Cliff Stoll videos don't work at 1.5x. Cliff at 1.0x is already like other people at 1.5x. I am so stoked to see Cliff at 1.0x in 2026 is still like other people at 1.5x. I am so glad to see Cliff still out there talking. "The Cuckoo's Egg"[0] was formative for me when I was a kid getting into computers. I am so happy that Cliff is out there making formative experiences for new…

I watched the talk and I wanted to be 76 to have that energy.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#84

Post by ozim »

CliffStoll wrote: post #78
alsetmusic wrote: post #53

A coworker suggested that I read The Cuckoo's Egg and I sorta shrugged it off. When I got around to reading it, I was pretty happy that it exists. It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet. You can skip all the descriptions about how tech works, which are included for normies. Imagine not using passwords or just using 'password' or all the other stuff that we did when we were young and stupid. Then imagine g…

It wasn't quite a time of innocence, more like a time of trust-through-ignorance. The entire network was built on people who relied on each other for connectivity, software, and support. I once got slapped down for suggesting that we put passwords on an astronomy computer: "What have we got to hide?". (Turned out that someone had set up a bulletin board server on that system, without anyone's knowledge.) Cheers, -Cli…

I watched the talk and you had quite a lot of run-ins with feds.

It seems they kind of had some idea about this stuff especially after what you uncovered. There was a movie from 1983 called "WarGames" !?!?

Why oh why cyberspace was only recognised as 5th operational domain only in 2016? Why do we have all kinds of cyber regulations kicking in past 3-4 years (well GDPR was already 10 years ago).

I guess you don't have the answers (asking Cliff Stoll but whoever else feels like responding I will be happy as well) for that but I think it still a fun question to ask. I obviously don't want to call out anyone stupid but somehow I cannot believe it took all that time to grow and become what it is today with all the regulations and "important" people recognising the issue.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#85

Post by wolfi1 »

CliffStoll wrote: post #78
alsetmusic wrote: post #53

A coworker suggested that I read The Cuckoo's Egg and I sorta shrugged it off. When I got around to reading it, I was pretty happy that it exists. It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet. You can skip all the descriptions about how tech works, which are included for normies. Imagine not using passwords or just using 'password' or all the other stuff that we did when we were young and stupid. Then imagine g…

It wasn't quite a time of innocence, more like a time of trust-through-ignorance. The entire network was built on people who relied on each other for connectivity, software, and support. I once got slapped down for suggesting that we put passwords on an astronomy computer: "What have we got to hide?". (Turned out that someone had set up a bulletin board server on that system, without anyone's knowledge.) Cheers, -Cli…

I'm European so when I read your book I read the first time about the NSA and I totally got the wrong impression of them, might also be, that they changed a lot since then

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#87

Post by KateLawson »

It used to be common to leave voicemail for him from conference bridges ("cl1ff st0le muh k0d3z"). His greeting said something like "I'm not here right now; I'm baking cookies".

@CliffStoll Even though I wasn't the perpetrator of said voicemail, apologies on behalf of all the kids who annoyed you just because they could.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#89

Post by russellbeattie »

alsetmusic wrote: post #53

A coworker suggested that I read The Cuckoo's Egg and I sorta shrugged it off. When I got around to reading it, I was pretty happy that it exists. It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet. You can skip all the descriptions about how tech works, which are included for normies. Imagine not using passwords or just using 'password' or all the other stuff that we did when we were young and stupid. Then imagine g…

> "It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet."

It wasn't that long ago where the network traffic of every website was transmitted in the clear via http, not https. Literally anyone at a coffee shop could listen to the WiFi network and see everything being sent and received in plain text. GMail didn't move to https until 2010, and I think it was one of the first webmail sites to do it. Browsers only started flagging non-https sites just in the past few years.

It already seems far fetched, honestly.

Re: Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

#90

Post by thataccount »

CliffStoll wrote: post #81
xyzelement wrote: post #36

It's been a few years - and I guess decades - since I read Cliff's book. One thing I recall is his journey from a Berkeley hippie to a man dealing with the military and men in suits and realizing that they are also good and necessary people. And also becoming a family man if I remember correctly. It's a really important part of the story in my mind of Cliff growing up - sort of - as part of the experience.

Yes, Xyz, you got it right. I started out as an apolitical Berkeley techie (not exactly a hippie) and came to realize that the government and, yes, the military were necessary and important to preserve the community that I was living in. It's easy to scribble "Stop the CIA" on Berkeley stop-signs; but who's going to inform our government about what's happening in the world? I did a lot of growing-up during that chase…

I think the actual curve of "rebellious hacker sort" eventually comes into contact with "orderly military type" and how a person chooses to deal with that interaction more or less determines the next 50+ years of their lives. I've seen your bottles around, and maybe someday when my bank account has fewer pressing purchases on it, I'll get one! (Unless your bottles also come with three wishes?)
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