01 logo

Catching the KGB

How an Eccentric Astronomer from California Outsmarted the KGB

By Dominic DauphinaisPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
2
Photo from Wikipedia

You’ve probably never heard of Dr. Clifford Stoll, an eccentric scientist from California with a Ph.D in astronomy, who almost single handedly outsmarted the KGB while some of their operatives in Germany were trying to hack into US national defense secrets.

They were looking for intelligence surrounding nuclear weapons. More specifically, secrets about Ronald Reagan's controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, a proposed “missile shield” that threatened to further destabilize an already tenuous nuclear agreement of non-proliferation. Critics condescendingly referred to it as “Star Wars.”

His cyber-sleuth days all started in 1986 when Stoll was then working at his dream job: designing telescope optics for Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s (LBL) Keck Observatory. But his dream evaporated one day as his grant money ran out. “Luckily for me,” Stoll says, “the LBL recycled used astronomers. I was transferred down to the computer center in the basement of the same building and started work as a computer systems manager.”

Stoll was excited to be working with state of the art computer technology, “We were using Sun workstations that we thought were hot stuff because they had almost 100 megabytes of disk space, 128 kilobytes of memory, and roared at the blinding speed of 8 megahertz,” he says. “The cell phone in your pocket today is thousands of times more powerful. We also had 50 80-megabyte external disk drives the size of washing machines. They sounded like washing machines, too, rattling around like they were on spin cycle.”

He was only on his second day on the job when his superiors came to him with a somewhat trivial problem to solve. “It was a 75 cent accounting error in the computer usage accounts,” says Stoll, “I traced the error to an unauthorized user who had used our systems for about nine seconds and not paid for it.” Stoll assumed the trespasser was an undergraduate doing it as a prank, “just some kid on campus who was yanking my chain.”

It wasn’t an easy process tracking down the culprit, but Stoll was enthusiastic and fascinated about finding the intruder. So much so that he spent the next ten months trying to solve the puzzle, regularly sleeping on a small bunk bed at the lab, because “whoever it was tended to log on late at night.”

“It was like a piece of yarn dangling from a sweater,” Stoll says. “You keep pulling on it and discovering that the yarn never ends. The sweater keeps unraveling until all you end up with is a mountain of tangles.”

His determination did not waver, and he persisted to ‘pull the yarn’. Gradually it dawned on him that this was no prank by a student. Stoll was able to follow the thread as far as a call center at MITRE, a defense contractor in McLean, Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters.

He attached a teleprinter to the line and watched clandestinely as the hackers repeatedly used the LBL computers to gain access to several military bases across the country, incessantly searching for files containing words like “nuclear” or “SDI.”

“At that point, it stopped being a game. All the three-letter agencies started banging on my door… FBI, CIA, NSA, as well as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.” says Stoll. This was serious stuff, involving not only national security but also the very integrity of networked data everywhere.

The American spy agencies were reluctant to get involved officially, partly because there was confusion about who had jurisdiction in this matter, but mostly because they had never encountered a case of ‘computer break-in’ before. “Hacker” was still relatively new terminology. Still, they were happy to work with Stoll unofficially, and with their help he traced the intruder’s call to the West German city of Bremen.

The stroke of genius came while Stoll was trying to figure out how he would identify the culprits. Whilst in the shower one day, Stoll concocted an idea, a kind of sting operation known in the spy business as a “honeypot.” He cleverly named it “Operation Showerhead.”

Knowing that the hackers were mainly interested in SDI, Stoll set up a phony SDI folder and filled it with files loaded with impressive-sounding bureaucratic gibberish.

“All you have to do to make military gobbledygook is to use academic gobbledygook and change the job titles,‘undergraduate’ to ‘lieutenant,’ ‘professor’ to ‘colonel,’ and ‘dean’ to ‘general,’” he explains. “Then throw in words like ‘parameters’ and ‘implement.’ Who can tell the difference? I sure didn’t, and the KGB even less so.”

The KGB fell for it hook, line and sinker. The hackers stayed on the line long enough for Deutsche Bundespost to locate him at his home in Hanover, West Germany. His name was Markus Hess, now notoriously known as the “Hanover Hacker.” He and his ring of spies had been selling information to the KGB for years.

Stoll got independent confirmation a few days later when a Bulgarian spy contacted the bogus SDI network Stoll had created by mail, requesting confirmation on “information” that could only have come from Stoll’s phony files.

“Apparently, that was the KGB’s way of double-checking to make sure [Hess] wasn’t selling them stuff he had just made up,” says Stoll, who flew to Germany to testify at the trial, in 1990, of Hess and his co-conspirators.

So there you have it, a 75 cent discrepancy led to the first ever cyber-espionage case to be solved by a quirky astronomer, working in the basement of Berkeley university.

What did Stoll get for his accomplishment? Aside from a brief 15-minutes of fame, he received a certificate of appreciation from the CIA, which is currently collecting dust somewhere in his attic.

He has since published two books, mostly about the negative side to our growing dependence on computer technology. Stoll articulated his disenchantment in his book, “Silicon Snake Oil'', published in 1995, which urged readers to get out from behind their computer screens and get a life. Not surprisingly, it was met with contempt from critics.

In 1999 he tried to answer his critics with another book, “High-Tech Heretic”, but they weren’t receptive in the least. “If people don’t listen to you the first time, they won’t listen to you the second time, either,” Stoll says. Still, he is firm in his beliefs to this day.

Are you ready for the M. Night Shyamalan plot twist? Doctor Stoll is now running a small business out of his basement, he is the sole proprietor and sole employee of ‘Acme Klein Bottles’. That’s right, he makes Klein bottles… if you don’t know what a Klein bottle is, I’ll leave it to you to do a quick Google search about it.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll

https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-mad-scientist-who-wrote-the-book-on-how-to-hunt-hackers/

https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2016-war-stories/how-berkeley-eccentric-beat-russians-and-then-made

history
2

About the Creator

Dominic Dauphinais

Just another wordsmith exploring the depths of his imagination through short stories. Maybe one day I'll write a long story. Who knows? I hope you enjoy my creations as much as I enjoy creating them.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.