Looks like an enjoyable read. You guys just cost me thirteen bucks (for the Kindle version). 
You could have seen the movie for free.
Apropos the diversion to “hacker” Cliff wrote an article in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) entitled Stalking the Wily Hacker describing parts of the story. He gained quite a bit of fame - with not one but two documentaries being made.
From the article:
He is still around- you can buy a Klein bottle from him. He says he still occasionally gets asked if he is that Cliff Stoll.
Depended on where you were. For me in the old college days*, someone hacking was just doing quasi-random stuff to get something to work without thinking about the cause of the problem and how to really do it. Such code was unbelievably bad.
E.g., a group of us one day were asked for help about a compiler error a programmer for the computer center was getting. Undefined variables.
He had subroutine A being called with variables X,Y,Z. A called subroutine B and B called subroutine C. Inside C he was trying to use X,Y,Z and getting the error.
He didn’t understand that X,Y,Z had to be passed to B and then to C! He got very upset about our “obviously stupid” solution since clearly X,Y,Z were passed to A so why should he bother passing them to C? Completely clueless.
If his programs worked at all it was a miracle.
This guy was a hacker in our domain.
- IBM 1130. Punch cards. Fortran II.
Check out the jargon file. The jargon file is “a comprehensive compendium of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor.”
Reminder: this originated at MIT (which sent people to places like SAIL). Most places aren’t MIT and therefore is it very, very far from any sort of a universal lexicon. It heavily reflects the classic attitude that MIT = the World that prevails there.
Computer hacking is really a subset of the original meaning of hacking at MIT. Putting a police car cutout on top of Building 7 was hacking. Throwing a piano off of the roof of Baker House was hacking. Planting a weather balloon on the 50-yard line of the Harvard Yale game was hacking.
When I was a freshman a friend of mine hacked the MIT 360 by using macros with security flaws that let him get into supervisor mode. He printed a message proving he was in, and then left - no damage done to anything. But this variety of hacking was very much in the minority at the time. (1970). But we did indeed call it hacking.
He gave a talk on this at Bell Labs Murray Hill, which got broadcast to other locations where I saw it. I had already read the book, but still the weirdest Bell Labs seminar I ever saw. Not just content, though he did give the recipe (brownies?) but speaking style.
Hacking can also involve getting authorized users of a computer to give you their logins and passwords, which have nothing to do with the computer system per se. (This is called social engineering.) I’d call hacking in this sense unauthorized access obtained through weaknesses in the computer system or its environment.
Using a gun to force someone to give you a password isn’t hacking.
I’d say that the computers and their human users together can also be said to constitute one system. Whether you call that one system a computer system is a matter of taste. But yes, the human part of a system is often easier to hack than the computer part.
I first heard the term “hacker” in the 1960’s when interviewing for a job. I mentioned that I enjoyed programming or such and the interviewer exclaimed “You’re a hacker! That’s what we’re looking for.”
(The guy’s PhD was from UC Berkeley, but he might have been at MIT earlier.)
The book was great fun to read. I liked his description of his life in Berkeley with his girlfriend/fiancee Martha, and the description of how he tracked the German hacker. There was the bit where he was visiting the CIA and, while sitting at someone’s desk, took the opportunity to use each of the various stamps (e.g., secret, top secret, etc) on his desk on a sheet of paper. (But then the paper was confiscated.)
But then I read an updated edition of the book with an epilogue describing his trip to Germany for the criminal proceedings. It sounded quite sad, with this really young guy on trial for serious crimes. And elsewhere I read that he and Martha got divorced, which I was sorry to hear.
Maybe, but I’d love to see the implementation plan that includes the step “make lusers less clueless.” Good luck with that.
One more post before bed.
For OP. Bear in mind, this I am being very general so I do not violate the Board Rules by instructing or condoning illegal behavior. but typically a common method of Hacking “cracking” something is usually by 1.) Finding what services or the like are being used on a given platform. 2.) Finding an exploit in that platform and using it. 3.)creating a ‘backdoor’ so you can leave and return at another time if you wish to do something else.
Example: You use a tool that scans for open ports commonly used by a particular service. Someone is running a certain type of webserver, you install it on a spare computer and with programming prowess, find a “hole” in the code that you can modify or change, or search for it and instructions (and be called a “script kiddie”) on how to implement it. Utilize the exploit or patch the software, modify routing tables to accept certain incoming traffic (you), implement a trojan (via executable binding) after creating exceptions in the anti-virus/disabling) and/or create an account with appropriate permissions (very easy in linux once you have gain root access) and a way to hide your IP when logging in. Don’t count on it though, if you find it, someone else has found the exploit too.
That is just one example. Before one can even attempt it they must be an adept at minimum in terms of programming or debugging, at the very least knowing how to read, rewrite some and compile code. Also, the many methods of hiding an IP address (which cannot be discussed, violation of board rules). At minimum you need to learn Unix/Linux, C/C++ programming, network topology and layering, HTML as well as a myriad of other things before you could even attempt to try anything, otherwise you will either fail, or succeed and be caught. Most people do not attempt it because the penalties are too stiff. Basically if you understand your OS enough, Networks and some Programming, you will figure it out in time. There is no “learn it overnight” method to it. There are many facets to it, and many other methods than the general idea outlined above as well as other things that can be done once a system is penetrated, just depends on your knowledge and determination. I was very general about it and won’t give you tips or ideas how to, sorry. I know it sucks, but it is against the forum rules and as much as I hate to be ‘that guy’, I have to tell you it this way “if you have to ask how, you are not ready”. I hope this helps you understand the basic principles behind it, without actually showing you how.
I’m stealing this.
I’ve not seen the updates version. No doubt the end game was pretty sad/bad all around. Some very naive people got caught up in things way beyond their realisation. This time was a bit of a start of the coming of age for computer hackers in general. Cliff describes the advent of the Morris Worm as well (and the extraordinary coincidence about its author). That was the first of many wake-up calls that said - this is no longer a happy friendly environment where you can trust everyone. I remember getting a copy of the warning message from the Unix gurus’ list for the worm when it hit - at the end it basically said, “we all knew this was possible - we just didn’t think anyone would do it.” By being possible, the message referred to exploiting long known holes in some services provided by a few Unix variants. We were lucky - our systems had received the appropriate patches. Up until then we had always assumed the threats came from within - from students on our systems messing about. The Morris Worm changed that forever.
Agree about Matha as well. The book and the documentaries let us into their lives as they were, and we saw a little taste of the happy times, so it is always sad when you hear it ended.
And if you want a real laugh, read Stoll’s second book, Silicon Snake Oil, where he says that the internet is all a bunch of hype and will never catch on very much.