The Cuckoo's Egg - by Cliff Stoll (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this white-knuckled true story that is "as exciting as any action novel" (The New York Times Book Review), an astronomer-turned-cyber-detective begins a personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatens national security and leads all the way to the KGB.

When Cliff Stoll followed the trail of a 75-cent accounting error at his workplace, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it led him to the presence of an unauthorized user on the system. Suddenly, Stoll found himself crossing paths with a hacker named "Hunter" who had managed to break into sensitive United States networks and steal vital information.

Stoll made the dangerous decision to begin a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a high-stakes game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases, one that eventually gained the attention of the CIA. What started as simply observing soon became a game of cat and mouse that ultimately reached all the way to the KGB.

Review Quotes

"As exciting as any action novel....A gripping spy thriller."
--New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating...a nonfiction account that reads like a le Carré spy novel."
--Seattle Times

"Stoll is the electronic equivalent of Indiana Jones...Grab the book."
--New York Newsday

"A spy story for the '90s -- and it's all true."
--Tom Clancy

"Stoll's is the ever-appealing story of the little man bucking the system...great fun to read...lively and thoroughly absorbing."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

"A mammoth manhunt....A sobering message about today's Information Age."
--Washington Post

"A computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating to the computer generation and astonishingly gripping to the rest of us."
--Smithsonian

"Nothing short of fascinating...Even if you don't know a byte from a bagel, The Cuckoo's Egg will grip you on page one and hold you as ferociously as the best mystery...It's the intensely human, often funny voice of the man on the trail that makes this book so wonderful.
--Cosmopolitan

"The Cuckoo's Egg is reader friendly, even for those who have only the vaguest familiarity with computers...a true spy thriller...The hunt is gripping."
--Chicago Tribune

About the Author

When, to the delight of the baffled FBI, CIA, and NSA, Cliff Stoll nailed his spy, he wound up on the front page of The New York Times. The story, broken in 1989, quickly gathered headlines across the nation and Stoll became a genuine, if somewhat unlikely, American hero.

An astronomer by training and a computer expert by accident, Cliff Stoll has become a leading authority on computer security, an issue recognized everywhere as among the most important security problems of our times. He has given talks for the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and has appeared before the U.S. Senate. Stoll is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.