The KGB, the Computer and Me

7.8
1990 0 hr 56 min Documentary

In 1986, astronomer turned computer scientist Clifford Stoll had just started working on a computer system at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory when he noticed a 75-cent discrepancy between the charges printed by two accounting programs responsible for charging people for machine use. Intrigued, he deduced that the system was being hacked, and he determined to find the culprit. This is the re-enactment of how he tracked down KGB cracker Markus Hess through the Ethernet to Hannover, Germany.

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Reviews

GazerRise
1990/10/03

Fantastic!

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Salubfoto
1990/10/04

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

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Lidia Draper
1990/10/05

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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Fleur
1990/10/06

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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Hirsch
1990/10/07

I do security response for a living. It is amazing how this guy was doing the same sorts of things almost 30 years ago as we do today. The technology has changed but the thought process hasn't. The way he hooked a logic analyzer to a tty, and set it to page him when it saw a certain word was essentially an early network intrusion detection system.The hackers were similar too. They set up shop on a series of vulnerable intermediary machines (Berkley, MITRE) to mask their activities from their actual target (military).I'm just really glad my job has never required an oscilloscope to measure round trip times for packets.

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just_tere
1990/10/08

The movie uses, according to the beginning, the actual characters from the entire "spy" chasing. I doubt the CIA agents who show up are really the actual ones, however.An astronomer at Berkley labs whose grant has run out gets a job in the IT department. His boss finds a $.75 problem in billing -- no account to charge it to -- and the chase is on. The actual events take place in the early 80's. The boss gives it to our hapless hero, who finds an account with no account number. This piques his interest, so he starts tracing it down.At one point, there are 50 stolen printers in action, to trace the hacker, who is finally discovered in Hanover, Germany. The Hacker was selling information he found while hacking to the KGB. Remember, this is before the wall fell, and while the KGB still existed.Additionally, the names the hacker used are quite a blast. Using a librarian to figure them out is a masterpiece! It is quite fun to watch how hard this young man had to work to trace the spy/hacker. Today, all this can be done in almost seconds. Then, it took two years, getting warrants from each state the hacker traveled through.While the movie is pretty old -- at the time of my review, 25 years -- it is exceptionally interesting, informative, and FUN to watch. Mr. Stoll, a hippie if ever there was one still left in the '80s, reenact his role, is fantastic. You can tell this was the highlight of his life (up to then, I hope). His animation, his enthusiasm, his good story telling are all worth watching.I do wonder if he married that girlfriend.

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Rod Morgan
1990/10/09

How this terrific PBS/Nova film could possibly have been allowed to go off sale is impossible to understand. This documentary/reenactment manages to tell most of the story of Clifford Stoll's best selling "The Cuckoo's Egg" with Clifford portraying himself. It is as lively and entertaining as the book itself, if not more so, and clearly articulates many of the issues associated with computer-based spying. A terrific example of how much energy a documentary can have - it will be worth the search at your local library or public school. Good luck!

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looking4ahandout
1990/10/10

The KGB, CIA, Computer and Me tells the true story of a computer nerd, Cliff, who is brought in by a company to find a hacker who's been using a companies computer. One thing leads to another and Cliff finds himself on the hunt for a hacker with the CIA.I believe this was a short created for the TV series "Nova". The acting isn't very good at all but the story is pretty good and the film is overall pretty funny. I can honestly say this is one of the most enjoyable movies I have ever got to watch in school.

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