Culture Club – The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

Our cultural work for the month of January is the 1989 book The Cuckoo's Egg, by Clifford Stoll:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)

The book is a classic in cybersecurity circles, and some of the techniques and terms it describes are now considered foundational to the discipline.

From Wikipedia:
Author Clifford Stoll, an astronomer by training, managed computers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California. One day in 1986 his supervisor asked him to resolve an accounting error of 75 cents in the computer usage accounts. Stoll traced the error to an unauthorized user who had apparently used nine seconds of computer time and not paid for it. Stoll eventually realized that the unauthorized user was a hacker who had acquired superuser access to the LBNL system by exploiting a vulnerability in [a text editor].

... This was one of the first⁠—⁠if not the first⁠—documented cases of a computer break-in, and Stoll seems to have been the first to keep a daily logbook of the hacker's activities.

About Culture Club:
Our fourth-Wednesday meetups are dedicated to discussion of a piece of culture – be it a book, a movie, an outside lecture, or something else – that is of interest to the group. Even if you have not read, listened, or watched this month's selected work but merely think it sounds intriguing, we hope that you will join us, since an outsider's perspective enhances every conversation.

You can browse the list of works we have already covered, and peep the queue of candidates for future meetings, here. If you would like to suggest a work for consideration, please check the link above first, and if you don't see it already listed, use this form.

Agenda:
6:30 - 7:00: Meet and greet
7:00 - 8:30: Discussion of featured work
8:30 - 9:00: General discussion and selection of next work

How to be:
Come with an open but critical mind, awareness of your own biases, and respect for your fellow humans. We're here to have a good conversation and a good time, and to that end your participation is subject to the Triangle Skeptics events code of conduct.