The Cuckoo's Egg

by Clifford Stoll

Collect raw data and throw away the expected. What remains challenges your theories.

Gnu was the hole in our system’s security. A subtle bug in an obscure section of some popular software. Installed blindly by our systems programmers, we’d never thought that it might destroy our whole system’s security.

Just like genetic diversity, which prevents an epidemic from wiping out a whole species at once, diversity in software is a good thing.

Maybe random passwords, obnoxious and dissonant, are more secure.

The hacker didn’t succeed through sophistication. Rather he poked at obvious places, trying to enter through unlocked doors. Persistence, not wizardry, let him through.

Bob realized that damage wasn’t measured in dollars ripped off, but rather in trust lost. He didn’t see this as fun and games, but a serious assault on a open society.

By analyzing public data with the help of computers, people can uncover secrets without ever seeing a classified database.

But more important, my research was finished. Five months ago, I asked myself, “How come my accounts are imbalanced by 75 cents?” That question had led me across the country, under the ocean, through defense contractors and universities, to Hannover, Germany.

“Any system can be insecure. All you have to do is stupidly manage it.”

Yet if we didn’t change every password, we couldn’t be sure that some other hacker might not have purloined an account. All it takes is one stolen account.

I pondered how I would now spend my time, now that my life wasn’t scheduled around the whims of some faceless foe from overseas.

I knew the whats and the hows. I wanted to know the who’s and whys. * In truth, German telephone

The computer has become a common denominator that knows no intellectual, political, or bureaucratic bounds;

The obvious way to prevent viruses is to avoid exchanging programs. Don’t take candy from strangers—don’t accept untrusted programs. By keeping your computer isolated from others, no virus program can infect it.

Diversity, then, works against viruses.