The KGB, the Computer and Me

This is a great Nova program with Clifford Stoll reenacting his role from his famous book "The Cuckoo's Egg."

I saw this TV program in this story before reading the book. Coming from a UNIX background it was fun to see a system I recognized. It could have been titled "The story of Ping" oops that title has been taken. I remember being billed for time on the computer and could only gain access at 2 AM. Many of these skills are now lost to people that do not have a shell account. I especially like how they kept the intruder on the line long enough to track. The hunt was intriguing, and it makes you wonder what is happening today. While this book deals with such things as passwords, the many new avenues created on today's Internet may afford a newer mystery. Until then this is the classic.

A student, Clifford Stoll, managing the computer at Berkley notices an unusual charge, $0.75, to an account. He finds that someone is hacking before it was fashionable; probably before there was Veronica. To track down the culprit(s) he must first learn the tracking skills. This process is in its infancy, so he must even invent a few of the skills himself. The use of timing and knowledge of the speed of light allows for a good guess at the distance. The only way to go through the old timing switching stations was to hold the intruder online long enough. This required the creation of a dummy database with intriguing information.

Who is the mysterious intruder(s)?

Will they be caught?

This based on true story how an astronomer turned computer scientist hunted down THE HACKER all way from Germany who was reading all important information in US government computers even CIA. The concepts an the ways that are applied to catch the hacker can only people who are in this field.

So if you don have any interest in computers or hacking stuff, don't watch it. u will never like it.

Myself being computer Engineer, enjoyed this movie. I also saw the other version that is the hackers story which is in German, thats also nice.

The KGB, CIA, Computer and Me tells the true story of a computer nerd, Cliff, who is brought in by a company to find a hacker who's been using a companies computer. One thing leads to another and Cliff finds himself on the hunt for a hacker with the CIA.

I believe this was a short created for the TV series "Nova". The acting isn't very good at all but the story is pretty good and the film is overall pretty funny. I can honestly say this is one of the most enjoyable movies I have ever got to watch in school.

How this terrific PBS/Nova film could possibly have been allowed to go off sale is impossible to understand. This documentary/reenactment manages to tell most of the story of Clifford Stoll's best selling "The Cuckoo's Egg" with Clifford portraying himself. It is as lively and entertaining as the book itself, if not more so, and clearly articulates many of the issues associated with computer-based spying. A terrific example of how much energy a documentary can have - it will be worth the search at your local library or public school. Good luck!

I do security response for a living. It is amazing how this guy was doing the same sorts of things almost 30 years ago as we do today. The technology has changed but the thought process hasn't. The way he hooked a logic analyzer to a tty, and set it to page him when it saw a certain word was essentially an early network intrusion detection system.

The hackers were similar too. They set up shop on a series of vulnerable intermediary machines (Berkley, MITRE) to mask their activities from their actual target (military).

I'm just really glad my job has never required an oscilloscope to measure round trip times for packets.