An Astronomer Hunts a KGB Hacker | HISTORY This Week | Podcast

Описание: 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

Credits:

Dan Rosato | Producer/Sound Designer
Sally Helm | Host/Producer
Ben Dickstein | Executive Producer
Eli Lehrer | Executive Producer
Liv Fidler | Executive Producer

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Chapters:
00:00 A Pager Goes Off in Berkeley
04:08 The 75-Cent Accounting Error
07:43 A Hacker Inside the System
12:20 Printing Every Keystroke
14:25 Military Networks Compromised
17:21 The FBI Says It’s Not Worth It
22:49 The Hacker Traced to Germany
24:50 The First Cyber Honeypot
27:42 The KGB Connection Revealed
28:54 The End of the Internet’s Innocence

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An Astronomer Hunts a KGB Hacker | HISTORY This Week | Podcast
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