Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to the capture of hackerMarkus Hess, and for Stoll's subsequent book The Cuckoo's Egg, in which he details the investigation. Stoll has written three books, articles in the non-specialist press, and is a frequent contributor to the mathematics YouTube channelNumberphile.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Stoll was assistant chief engineer at WBFO, a public radio station in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In 1986, while employed as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Stoll investigated a tenacious hacker—later identified as KGB recruit Markus Hess—who stole passwords, pirated multiple computer accounts, and attempted to breach US military security. After identifying the intrusion, Stoll set up a honeypot for Hess, eventually tracking him down and passing details to the authorities. It is recognized as one of the first examples of digital forensics. At the time, gaining cooperation from law enforcement was a challenge due to the relatively new nature of the crime. He described the events of his investigation in The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage and the paper "Stalking the Wily Hacker". Stoll's book was later chronicled in an episode of WGBH's NOVA titled "The KGB, the Computer, and Me", which aired on PBS stations in 1990. In his 1995 book Silicon Snake Oil and an accompanying article in Newsweek, Stoll called the prospect of e-commerce "baloney". Stoll also raised questions about the influence of the Internet on future society, and whether it would be beneficial. He made various predictions in the article, e.g., about e-commerce and the future of printed news publications. When the article resurfaced on Boing Boing in 2010, Stoll left a self-deprecating comment: "Of my many mistakes, flubs, and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler ... Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff ..." Stoll was an eighth-grade physics teacher at Tehiyah Day School, in El Cerrito, California, and later taught physics to home-schooled teenagers. Stoll was a regular contributor to MSNBC's The Site. Stoll is an FCC licensed amateur radio operator with the call sign K7TA. He appears frequently on Brady Haran's YouTube channel Numberphile. s Stoll sells blown glassKlein bottles on the internet through his company Acme Klein Bottles. He stores his inventory in the crawlspace underneath his home and accesses it when needed with a homemade miniature robotic forklift. He runs the company out of his home.
