The Cuckoo's Egg

I read the book The Cuckoo’s Egg, by Cliff Stoll. I had never read anything like this book before but it caught my attention right away. I think that one of the neat things about the book was the style in which the book was written. This is a true story about Cliff Stoll and the experience he had of tracking a hacker through a whole country and eventually around the world, but the characters are developed so well that they seem fictional. The book is written just like a story, but all the events that take place in it are true. While reading the book, I kept thinking about how amazing it is that we have come so far in our networking technology and the internet, however, we still use a lot of the same things that were used at the time of the events in the book. These events took place in 1986 when the internet was still new to the world, but things like dial up modems that were used to connect then are still used in some houses today. I also really got the understanding of how much can be done, good and bad, because of the internet. This hacker was able to use many different phone lines around the world to connect to a main computer at Berkley University which made him very difficult to trace. He was traced eventually back to Germany where he was caught and arrested. As I thought of all the different computers that he was able to access it made me realize what a great resource we really have in the internet and networking. If used properly, and not like this hacker, we really can connect and enjoy the whole world right at our finger tips. In the book we watch the hacker connect to hundreds of different computers, and access their information. It is amazing to think that anyone now can do the same thing. So, overall I guess what I am trying to say is, the computer and the internet are amazing things, but amazing things can be used in bad ways, but when used for good we can gain a great deal of insight to the world. I really enjoyed the book and I recommend it if you are interested in the computer world.