I wonder if a story similar to the one in the Cuckoos Egg would be possible today. Technology has improved greatly since that story took place. These advances make it both easier to track people as well as to hide. I can think of two reasons why it is not likely to happen again. First, Cliff Stoll received a lot of help from individuals at the network companies that probably wouldn't be available today. He called them at unusual hours. They performed call traces because they were interested in what was happening. These people had extra time to help Stoll on his hunt. In today's world I don't think a company would allow one of their employees to waste time on a wild goose chase. Second, the job of searching for a cyber hacker would not be pushed onto one of the individual victims. Federal agencies, such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA, have taken a greater interest in cyber security after incidents like this, and now react quickly to threats of this nature. These agencies are more formal and take proper legal action in conducting their investigations. Any significant work done by a regular person would most likely be discredited because they did not have legal jurisdiction.
This does not mean that we no longer have a responsibility to keep track of things happened on our networks. Every network administrator is charged with ensuring privacy is secured and if a problem is found it should be reported to the proper agencies with jurisdiction to further investigate.
This seems like a good analysis to me. I agree with your thoughts that Cliff Stoll would simply not have access to the same kinds of people today that he did back then. I wonder, though, whether the government really has become better at tracking and prosecuting computer criminals. For certain things, like pirating, or child pornography, those agencies are very proactive. However, I wonder if, when you call them about a similar break-in situation in a low-risk server, whether they really would follow the lead, or if it would be more similar to Cliff's experience. Either way, great post, thanks for sharing!
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