I only knew Cliff Stoll as the Klein Bottle guy. He's been a beloved recurring guest on Numberphile over the years, with hugely a popular videos on the topic that show off his humor and teaching...
40 years ago today, I tripped over a 75-cent accounting glitch in a Unix system. That tiny clue led to a year-long chase across networks, modem banks, and international borders, ultimately uncovering a crew of German hackers working for the East German Stasi and the Soviet KGB. We had no budget, no roadmap, and no “cyber” anything. We improvised with soldering irons, shell scripts, logbooks, curiosity, and far too much coffee. Let’s revisit the chase – not just to remember, but to ask what changed, what didn’t, and why it still matters.
I found this video worth sharing because its a joyous dose of Cliff Stoll, an engaging retelling of his adventures in cybersecurity in the 1980s, and a reminder of how much has changed in the last 40 years and will change in the next.
I only knew Cliff Stoll as the Klein Bottle guy. He's been a beloved recurring guest on Numberphile over the years, with hugely a popular videos on the topic that show off his humor and teaching skills. But that characterization ignores all the other things he's done.
I found this video worth sharing because its a joyous dose of Cliff Stoll, an engaging retelling of his adventures in cybersecurity in the 1980s, and a reminder of how much has changed in the last 40 years and will change in the next.