Secret Subjects/Secret Subjects.iso/undergrd/vol_1/cud112c.txt

Text File | 1994-11-01 | 16KB | 276 lines

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                  >C O M P U T E R   U N D E R G R O U N D<
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               ***  Volume 1, Issue #1.12 (June 10, 1990)   **
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***  Computer Underground Digest Issue #1.12 / File 3 of 5  ***
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Stoll, Clifford.  The Cuckoo's Egg.  Doubleday, 1989.  326 pp.
                      (Reviewed by Charles Stanford)


Stoll's work has received extremely mixed reviews, and most of the
reviews were based on the reviewers' personal attitudes towards computer
use.  This review is no exception, but it does attempt to address some of
the literary concerns that should arise in a book review.

Stoll takes us on a "spy hunt"  -- it is not a fluke that the book is
located right next to "I Led Three Lives" and other laughable works of
espionage fiction disguised as reporting.  His grant money "ran out" and
so, to keep eating, he begins to work for the computer center in Berkeley.
(No explanation of why it "ran out."  Did he complete the work?  Was his
renewal rejected through the "peer review process?" Did he even try to
renew?) There is a 75 cent shortfall and he is given the task of finding
out where that 75 cents went.  He describes his subsequent activity with
remarkable candor, guilty as he may be of committing several crimes
himself. He finally gives information leading to the arrest, but not
necessarily the conviction, of a "hacker."  That's about it.

One of the most annoying aspects of the book is not, however, Stoll's
pursuit of the hacker but his interminable self-justification and annoying
self-description..  One has the feeling that Stoll himself knows that his
activity was obsessive and nearly insane because he so often attempts to
justify it, painting himself as a liberal hippie type wearing blue-jeans
and complete with long hair and a "sweetheart" who can beat him at
wrestling.  How cool it all is!  Like, man, geez, like.  We learn of him
putting his tennis shoes in the micro-wave and how he rides a bicycle to
work uphill and how he believes in love and trust and the Grateful Dead and
how he and his "sweetheart" eventually get married and live happily ever
after.  He grows up, you see.  Not since "Love Story" by Eric Seal have I
seen such a vapid piece of self-indulgence.  I was about to say at least
Eric Segal . . . , but really could not think of anything that would
differentiate the two.

Almost at random, we can look at some of his less personal statements
and see this same thread:  "As pure scientists, we're encouraged to
research any curious phenomena, and can always publish our results." (P.
15)  Unfortunate that this particular "pure scientist" lost his grant.  But
what about that curious phenomena?  What about a strange computer or a new
computer?  Is that not curious phenomena?  No, because the "varmit" was a
"hacker" and therefore wearing a "black hat."  No, I am not paraphrasing,
these are Stoll's actual words.  He really isn't a hippy after all -- he is
a frustrated Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger with his faithful sidekick
"sweetheart," tracking down the varmits, by gum!

I have also heard that some of the techniques he describes in the book
have been used by "hackers" to gain access to mainframe computers but,
before you run out and buy the book on that account, allow me to present
some of the information Stoll gives.  He starts out by trying to monitor
every single call coming into the computer, grabbing P.C.s from offices for
that purpose.  He finally applies his expertise.  He notices that the calls
come in at 1200 baud and are therefore from outside and would therefore
come in only on certain lines.  Amazing bit of deduction, wouldn't you say?
You see, he points out, 1200 baud is a slower rate of transfer than 9600 or
more.  And he even explains what "baud" is.  With such esoteric information
as this getting out all over the country, I wonder why this book hasn't
been suppressed.  We also learn that Kermit is a file transfer protocol.

Of course there are some things in the book that the normal 12 year
old with a Commodore 64 might not have known and this book is conveniently
written on that level.  For example, if you want to logon to a Unix system,
try the password "root," logon "root."  If that doesn't work, try "guest."
If that doesn't work, try UUCP. If you are 12, perhaps Stoll has sent you
on to a life of crime.  On a VAX, try "system" account, password "manager,
"field, "service," and "user," "user."  (p.132).  And don't forget the
Gnu-Emacs hole (132-133).  Of course, one would be much better off in
simply getting hold of a UNIX manual and reading it, but then he would not
have had the fun of learning all about "sweetheart" and her halloween
parties as well.  I'd put the money on the manual.  Actually, of far more
interest in this area would be the article he published on the subject
which is cited in the book ("Stalking the Wily Hacker," Communications of
the ACM, May, 1988).

More troubling is Stoll's use of the term "hacker."  He uses it in its
popular, media, law-enforcement definition which is, loosely put, "varmit."
According to the HACKERS DICTIONARY, available from listserve@uicvm, this
is the definition of a Hacker:

HACKER (originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe n. 1. A person
who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch
their capabilities, as opposed to most users who prefer to learn only the
minimum necessary.  2.  One who programs enthusiastically, or who enjoys
programming rather than just theorizing about programming.  3.  A person
capable of appreciating hack value (q.v.).  4.  A person who is good at
programming quickly.  Not everything a hacker produces is a hack.  5.  An
expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or
on it . . . . 6.  A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover
information be poking around.

Obviously, only the last, and least used, definition even remotely
approaches the term "varmit."  Unfortunately, many hackers, when approached
by law enforcement officers, will readily admit to being hackers when
questioned about it.  Don't make that mistake, varmits.

As a self-proclaimed hippie-type, Stoll has his greatest trouble in
explaining why he is so close to the CIA and FBI (which, by the way, had
the most sensible approach to this whole episode).  Now what could you
possibly come up with to explain that sort of activity.  Unfortunately,
being a hippie by self-definition, he could not use patriotism.  He
couldn't say he was in it for the money (which he is, despite his
protestations to the contrary) since that is not hippieish -- it is
"uncool."  He comes up with "trust."  A nice, honorable, clean sounding
term.  Yes, trust it shall be.  You see, all the network users trust each
other, now don't they?  The proposition is almost laughable to anyone who
has ever been on a network, but Stoll will talk about the community of
trust that has been established, a trust that is being destroyed and eroded
by varmits.  His appropriation of that word is almost obscene when one
considers what his self-aggrandizement has done to that very trust he so
values.

One argument he uses to support his activities is that your own credit
information is in one of those systems.  Now you wouldn't want that
available to the general public would you?  Would you want a 12 year old to
know your buying habits?  The fact is that corporate America knows this and
wants to keep it their exclusive domain.  Whether the information is false
or not, they do not want you to know about it, but they will share it
amongst themselves.  Sometimes they sell the information back and forth.  I
think there is far more danger from that than there is from some "varmit,"
peeking into one of their systems.  Those lily-livered, sap sucking,
sidewinders (sorry, couldn't help it).


Clifford Stoll now "... lives in Cambridge with his wife, Martha
Matthews, and two cats he pretends to dislike."  (p.327) I think that is a
very touching, cute, detail about him, perfect to end the book because it
is typical of the sorts of things he litters the manuscript with
throughout.



This is where the review should end.  It is neat, compact, obligatory
description, sustained attack, and has a cute ending to wrap things up, and
this is how I would end it if I were getting paid to write the review.
However, since I am not getting anything out of this, I feel free to add a
bit more, also gratis.

       Since Stoll lists his E-Mail address, and since I like to be
thorough, I decided to write him a note and see what would happen.  Why
should I just decided that he is posturing?  Why not find out for sure?
Maybe the address does not work.  What could be lost by trying?  (Well, I
could have the three letter agencies after me but the pursuit of truth and
so on is more important --well, perhaps.)

At any rate, I had two major questions lingering in my mind:  just
what was this grant all about and does he get much nuisance mail as a
result of publishing his E-Mail address.  I sent the questions to his
number at about 3:30 my time and started to pack for a trip out of town.
Shortly thereafter, I logged on again to check last minute mail and to
delete a bunch of stuff and found this on my screen:  "56 30 May
[e-mail] Re: questions".  Well, I could not just leave at that
point.  Frankly, I was a bit surprised.  I had expected to get some note
from somewhere along the networks to the effect that the user was unknown
or perhaps some indication that a trace had been started by some illiterate
narc.

Instead, Stoll had replied, almost immediately, to my note.  Hm, he
seems to attend to his E-mail they same way I do mine.  This is how he
answered the first question:

     Grant money ran out?  In short, the project moved to Hawaii.  I
     was on the design team for the Keck Observatory Ten Meter
     Telescope.  The Science Office, at LBL, designed the instrument.
     As the design progressed into construction, there was less
     research to do and more contract oversight.  This, in turn, meant
     that our grant money ran thin.  So I began working part time at
     the computing center.

And so, for lack of proper federal funding, the entire spy/witch hunt
began.

An interesting thing about this is what kind of astronomy is being
done?  It reminds me of wanting at one time to be a cosmologist and being
deflected time and time again by other considerations.  Stoll may have
started with an interest in the stars, perhaps in the origin of the
universe, but wound up working with the computers instead.  Oh well,
nothing wrong with that, but interesting just the same.  I wonder when he
last was able actually to look through a telescope.

The next question was a bit loaded as I knew he had gotten not only
nuisance mail but some pretty nasty threats.  I also knew of some other
attempts, but no matter.  His response is interesting:


     Nuisance mail?  Yes, a few morons send anonymous mail; I've
     received threatening phone calls and such not.  Compared to the
     mountain of nice mail I've received, I'm happy that I published
     my e-mail address.  In fact, the best part of publishing the book
     has been the letters.  I answer each one personally - no form
     letters or macros.

       Cheers,
       Cliff Stoll

So what does this indicate?  He was not posturing!  I remembered then
seeing him on CSPAN, an hour long interview with no commercial
interruptions and, at that time, I found it difficult to believe that he
was posturing, but now I'm even more certain.  In short, he actually
believes what he wrote.  There is probably not one false note in the book.

Which raises an even more troubling problem.  I am able to understand
someone who pretends to be for such issues as "trust" in order to gain
acceptance -- almost every politician falls into this category and I grew
up in Chicago when Daley Sr. was Mayor.  What is almost frightening is
someone who actually believes that he is making the world safe for
democracy, freedom, and the American way by camping out under his desk at
the computer lab with sixteen P.C.'s whirring away monitoring the
mainframe, rigging up a pager so that every time a call came in he could
peddle uphill in hopes of catching the miscreant.

But there is more.  I wrote him another note.  I wanted to
clarify a few other things.  For example, I found the personal
parts of the narrative problematic.  I told him so and asked him
if they were his idea or forced upon him by a zealous editor.  I
asked a few other questions as well and he responded.  However, I
also asked for permission to reprint his answers verbatim, but he
either overlooked the request or thought it irrelevant
considering his response which was, basically, to the effect that
I should go ahead with the review based on my response, not his
replies.

At any rate, the gist of the letter, a rather lengthy one, was that
one thing lacking in our culture is a popular literature relating to
technology and that he wanted to help correct this deficiency.  In other
words, the book is not written for people who already know about computers
(indeed, this seems to be a major source of confusion on the matter), but
for the general public, the lay folk out there, who know nothing about
networks.  The people who think anyone who works with computers is some
sort of recluse, a demented misfit.  (Gordon Meyer's infamous Masters
Thesis comes to mind here.)

       Stoll has an excellent point here -- we do lack such a
literature.  Certainly, the work of Carl Sagan and earlier Isaac Asimov
served somewhat to breach this gap, but not the way Stoll's does.  In fact,
I have already begun work on one of my own, tentatively titled "Cops,
Cuckoos, and Computer Jurisprudence."

In short, if you know a bit about computers and computer networks, are
familiar with UNIX and a few operating systems, you already know too much
to enjoy this book.  If you are entirely ignorant of them and if you liked
Love Story, this is the book for you.


Charles Stanford

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