Catching KGB Hackers with 75¢ and a 2400 Baud Modem

Nation state hackers have been trying to get into the secrets stored on computers for decades. The Russian KGB has been trying, and often succeeding, to hack into computer systems before there was a publicly accessible internet; back when the Arpanet was used primarily to connect university and government computer systems. Do you know who caught the KGB in the act of their hacking activities within these computer systems when no one else, not even the FBI or the military, was interested in finding a hacker that was getting into some of the Arpanet connected computers? Why, an astronomer, of course!

Tune in to hear Dr. Clifford Stoll describe in great detail how he caught the KGB hackers, without the use of network security tools (what has been used during the past thirty years didn’t exist back then!), using his brilliance and other tools available to him at the time, such as dial-up phone line modems and reams of paper printouts. Through his perseverance and patience, he was able to catch the hackers.

Dr. Stoll wrote the book, The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, in 1989 which provides his first-person account of his hackers-catching odyssey. A 1990 PBS documentary, “The KGB, the Computer, and Me,” provided additional information.

In this episode we cover additional facts about the hack, that include more discussion of the technical and security perspectives, still applicable, and some of the specific work that Dr. Stoll did during his tracking of the wily hackers, that actually seem to have inspired some of the tools commonly used by cybersecurity pros today…that they probably don’t even realize were first established by Clifford Stoll!

We also hear Dr. Stoll’s thoughts about cybersecurity, education, technology, the importance of asking questions and curiosity, the polarimetry of Jupiter at large phase angles, Klein bottles, and much, much more.

See more about Clifford Stoll at https://www.ted.com/speakers/clifford_stoll. See Dr. Stoll’s paper, “Polarimetry of Jupiter at Large Phase Angles” at https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/282394/azu_td_8020326_sip1_m.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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