A Book report on The Cuckoo?s Egg by Cliff Stoll - A Cuckoo?s Fledgling :: essays research papers

A Book report on The Cuckoos bollock by drop cloth StollA Cuckoos Fledgling Although the 1980s are non generally thought of as a decade of innocence, in that location were, however, a few pockets of juvenile utopia. One such example was the rapidly expanding online community, with its assortment of up-and-coming networks that were, to many technically inclined users, a virtual McDonalds Play Place with slides, ball pits and winding tubes to explore, all rapped in a security blanket of innocence. Not until a bully invaded, did another bastion of delayed-maturity, Cliff Stoll, find that Big Bother was not eager, or perhaps unable, to repel the invader on his behalf. This led Cliff to take responsibility and stand up to his assailant, causing a transformation throughout many facets of his life. The Cuckoos Egg is the story of Cliff Stolls maturation into an adult, mirrored by the firing of innocence and youthful-trusting-openness taking place in the network community at the time, catalyzed by a hacker halfway around the world, and necessitated by a insouciant attitude among the governmental agencies supposed to be responsible for computer security. A question all parents, and some elder siblings, ask at some request is, when should I let Jr. stand on his own? and while it was only a case of bureaucracy not being equipped to right away respond to a situation, this lack of response forced a man out of his comfort zone, gave him something to care about, and eventually made for an interesting book. It could even be hypothesized that Cliffs decision to marry was aided by the paradigm shift he experienced during the course of his hacker chase (Stoll 356). The delay of handling on the part of the government agencies forced Cliff Stoll to leave the sidelines of his life, take responsibility, and become "pro-activealmost rabidabout computer security (370). At the generator of his story, Cliff portrays himself as an academic dreamer (1), literally a start gaz er he seams to be fumbling though life without a cause to withdraw behind, and for that matter not really looking for one. Then when he starts chasing a hacker, thinking that he, might learn about phone traces and networks (35), he struck a blow to a tar-baby that would not let him go back to his life of indifference. The entanglement in pursuit of the hacker was elongated, significantly, by the fact that the government did not have contingencies in place to respond to computer crime, coupled with the simple fact that without a quantitative dollar value they did not take losings seriously.