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In a world where the Internet is now a deeply ingrained part of our culture, and all kinds of security traps seek to exploit the innocent on the 'Net, this is a refreshing account of the innocent early days of Internet computing. Thank you, Mr. I don't know what took me so long, but I finally, finally read this book. This is a really, really good, entertaining and enlightening read. Stoll, for busting the bad guys and also for this amazing account of what happened. And once I did, I couldn't put it down. This is part computer security and communications technology history, part espionage/spy story, part a peek into the seemingly counterintuitive world of governmental bureaucracy.
With a little luck I could connect to some BBS (Bulletin Board System) using Gopher and we were suddenly in distant America. Cliff Stoll is a astrologer at the University of Berkeley but discovered accidentally (by a stupid financial irregularity of 75 cents) an unauthorized user on their computer. WaauwCliff Stoll was my childhood idol and I knew then that I really wanted to do something similar. From then goes on a cat and mouse game, between Cliff and the hacker.The commands (telnet, whois.). in this book were something magical i wanted to know everything about.At that time I was already crazy and keenly interested in computers and networks but the Internet still was something far away (at least for me).
Stoll is not an excellent writer, but he did a great job of tracking a hacker when that sort of thing just wasn't a big concern for law enforcement, and his documentation of the whole thing as it went along was probably the only thing that got the guy caught and prosecuted. Cliff Stoll was a physicist working at Lawrence Berkeley Labs as a sys admin when he accidentally fell into counterterrorism research. Recommended if you're a big nerd like me; not recommended if you're not. That book is a nerd test - if you've heard of it, you're probably a big nerd. I can say that because I'm a big nerd.
Great job. I ordered the book on a Monday (pm) and was surprised to receive the book only four days later.
This book covers the trials and tribulations that Eric Stoll encountered during that time in his life. This in turn led Eric Stoll to a wide variety of security issues. His experiences during this course of events led to Eric Stoll becoming one of the foremost Network Security EXPERTS in the World. This book is the true account of Eric Stoll tracking down a simple accounting error. The minor accounting discrepancy, led to various other discrepancies.
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