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An Astronomer Hunts a KGB Hacker
Season 6 Episode 17
September 10, 1986. It’s just before 8am when Cliff Stoll’s pager jolts him awake. A computer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab has flagged a problem: a tiny 75-cent accounting error. But when Stoll rushes to his office, he realizes this isn’t about missing spare change. Someone has slipped into the lab’s network, tunneling thousands of miles away into U.S. military computers.
Cliff isn’t a spycatcher. He’s an astronomer. And yet, from this moment on, he’ll spend months chasing a hacker who may be working for the KGB.
How did spare change uncover a spy ring? And why did this case mark the end of innocence on the Internet?
Special thanks to Cliff Stoll, astronomer, teacher, and author of The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage; and J.J. Widener, cybersecurity expert currently serving as Director of Cybersecurity Architecture at Kimberly-Clark.
Artwork: Cliff Stoll promo image
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Published on 1 week ago