The Cuckoo's Egg

Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter"—a mystery invader hiding inside a twisting electronic labyrinth, breaking into U.S. computer systems and stealing sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own, spying on the spy—and plunged into an incredible international probe that finally gained the attention of top U.S. counterintelligence agents. The Cookoo's Egg is his wild and suspenseful true story—a year of deception, broken codes, satellites, missile bases, and the ultimate sting operation—and how one ingenious American trapped a spy ring paid in cash and cocaine, and reporting to the KGB.

Chicago Tribune

[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.

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.