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  • Hacker News
  • Thanks @CliffStoll for the wonderful talk.
    by thebeardisred
  • Quite welcome, Red Beard. I had fun doing that spoutathon. Meeting old friends at DefCon. Way fun.
    by CliffStoll
  • One of my favorite books is "The Cuckoo's Egg". I read it at least yearly. Cliff Stoll has had an incredible impact on my interests. I'm happy to see him doing talks.
    by Peacefulz
  • And my thanks to you, Peaceful Lulz. I had fun writing that book, and occasionally do a talks. Couldn’t resist a 40th anniversary spoutathon at defcon! -Cliff
    by CliffStoll
  • I saw him speak at the Dayton Hamvention two times. Absolute fun and like no other.

    When I was CSO at Relativity, I conducted security awareness training for all, and gave each one a copy of Cuckoo’s Egg.

    by wglb
  • There's nothing like speaking to the choir. When you have the same common denominator, it makes storytelling easy.

    The Defcon ham radio village was packed -- I picked up a lot of info on meshtastic. Last night set up a node in my attic.

    by CliffStoll
  • Great followup interview, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJCWsoozg0Q
    by ericd
  • I would not take the advice of somebody, if that persons basement is not full of klein-bottles. Everything else is just surface level ..
    by 21asdffdsa12
  • I wanted it fractal glass etched with clifstolls name, but they wouldn't do that.
    by 21asdffdsa12
  • I have a Klein bottle on the shelf behind me, and next to it sits a Klein bottle opener, just in case. https://www.kleintools.com/catalog/branded-collection/klein-...
    by psadauskas
  • I checked my basement Klein bottle stock and it looks like I’ve got zero volume. How much can I put you down for? (we sell by the litre)
    by Waterluvian
  • My kids don't take the advice of anyone who has Kleinbottles in their crawlspace, fdsa. And I doubt if removing those glass manifolds would have much effect. -C
    by CliffStoll
  • It's been a few years - and I guess decades - since I read Cliff's book. One thing I recall is his journey from a Berkeley hippie to a man dealing with the military and men in suits and realizing that they are also good and necessary people. And also becoming a family man if I remember correctly.

    It's a really important part of the story in my mind of Cliff growing up - sort of - as part of the experience.

    by xyzelement
  • Yes, Xyz, you got it right. I started out as an apolitical Berkeley techie (not exactly a hippie) and came to realize that the government and, yes, the military were necessary and important to preserve the community that I was living in. It's easy to scribble "Stop the CIA" on Berkeley stop-signs; but who's going to inform our government about what's happening in the world? I did a lot of growing-up during that chase.

    As Bob Segar said, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

    by CliffStoll
  • Thank you Cliff!

    I had shivers most of the time during the talk, it was touching me from the inside and flipping me back like a latex glove. And while I knew your story I confess I listened to you for the first time.

    It was the most amazing cyber space trip ever, feeling those copper lines and understanding you could interface with their content.

    You simply represent what a hacker is, I'm getting older and loosing motivation and creativity, but after hearing you I swear I will never give that up and I promise I will keep the hardcore digging for those cents.

    You are our father.

    by giov4
  • And my warm thanks to you, Giov. As you realize, in that talk I probably covered 5 percent of what actually happened. But that's storytelling.

    Like you, as I've grown older, I cherish those times when my old-school skills are still useful - whether in computing, physics, or electronics. And there's so many new goodies that I'm never bored.

    Anyways - how often do you get a chance to show a slide rule to a thousand people? Cheers, -Cliff

    by CliffStoll
  • The Cuckoo's Egg is still one of the best security books ever written. Glad he's still around.
    by Sorrel47
  • If The Cuckoo's Egg is one of the best ones, I can skip the rest. It's a fun story, but not particularly well-told in my opinion. Cliff Stoll is a cool guy who does cool things. I guess I just don't appreciate him as an author.
    by allknowingfrog
  • It's the first book I read about computer history and made me interested in tech, a career I love doing every day :) this talk made me very happy.
    by Qwuke
  • What a fascinating video. What a treat to hear him talk.

    Much of my excitement has been dying off due to the commercialization of the hacker community, the culture war, and the constant legislative losses for privacy and effective ownership of goods you purchase because they've code in them you often cannot legally circumvent the "digital lock" on.

    I'm curious what can be done to get it back. It seems the more I care, the more I get jaded due to the constant loss of freedom with tech.

    by rockskon
  • A coworker suggested that I read The Cuckoo's Egg and I sorta shrugged it off. When I got around to reading it, I was pretty happy that it exists. It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet. You can skip all the descriptions about how tech works, which are included for normies. Imagine not using passwords or just using 'password' or all the other stuff that we did when we were young and stupid. Then imagine government agencies doing the same. What? Yep. That's what the book is about.
    by alsetmusic
  • > "It's a real time-portal to a pre-security internet."

    It wasn't that long ago where the network traffic of every website was transmitted in the clear via http, not https. Literally anyone at a coffee shop could listen to the WiFi network and see everything being sent and received in plain text. GMail didn't move to https until 2010, and I think it was one of the first webmail sites to do it. Browsers only started flagging non-https sites just in the past few years.

    It already seems far fetched, honestly.

    by russellbeattie
  • It wasn't quite a time of innocence, more like a time of trust-through-ignorance. The entire network was built on people who relied on each other for connectivity, software, and support. I once got slapped down for suggesting that we put passwords on an astronomy computer: "What have we got to hide?". (Turned out that someone had set up a bulletin board server on that system, without anyone's knowledge.) Cheers, -Cliff
    by CliffStoll
  • I saw him live in a presentation he gave in Chicago, early 90s. He and his book are the cause of my switching from a very young PhD in thermodynamics career to going back to school for CS, then working in the latter field until retirement, years back. I also read his Silicon Snake Oil book, as soon as it came out, which he - himself - publicly claimed to have been in error, in parts, sometimes, but about which I now think - looking at X, TruthSocial, TikTok, etc. - that may, in fact, has been premonitory...
    by netfortius
  • > Silicon Snake Oil book, as soon as it came out, which he - himself - publicly claimed to have been in error, in parts, sometimes, but about which I now think - looking at X, TruthSocial, TikTok, etc. - that may, in fact, has been premonitory...

    It wasn’t really premonitory. More technophobic. It’s understandable in 1995 to have written it as few could envision what we have today.

    by firesteelrain
  • I watch a lot of videos at 1.5x. Older Cliff Stoll videos don't work at 1.5x. Cliff at 1.0x is already like other people at 1.5x.

    I am so stoked to see Cliff at 1.0x in 2026 is still like other people at 1.5x. I am so glad to see Cliff still out there talking. "The Cuckoo's Egg"[0] was formative for me when I was a kid getting into computers. I am so happy that Cliff is out there making formative experiences for new hackers today.

    Great talk, Cliff. (The "adjusted for inflation" quip about the budget made my day, too.)

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book)

    by EvanAnderson
  • I watched the talk and I wanted to be 76 to have that energy.
    by ozim
  • Thanks! Just ordered the book. Cliff Stoll is a treasure, I knew vaguely about this story, but not about the book. Looking forward to it.
    by mvdwoord
  • The only paperback book I've ever sat down and read in one sitting. Started on a lazy Sunday morning and literally couldn't put it down. Highly recommended if you've not read it.
    by _joel
  • (1990) The KGB, the Computer and Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gHNVNRQTJg
    by someothherguyy