Cliff Stoll's Hacker

I recently finished reading the book "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll. I found it interesting how he was constantly trying to get help from government agencies throughout the entire story and they all refused to help. He was chasing the hacker by himself even though many of the "three letter agencies" wanted him to shut it down and forget about it. He was driven by his own curiosity and sense of justice. It consumed almost an entire year of his life yet he kept going without outside support until he finally caught the hacker. Sometimes I wish I had that sort of self motivation and drive in the things I do.

Another thing I found interesting was how many ignorant systems managers there were in charge of sensitive information. All the hacker had to do to get into many systems was use the default user name and password that came with the machine and then create an account for himself. You'd think the systems managers would know enough to at least change those default passwords.

I had never heard of Cliff Stoll or the hacker Markus Hess before reading this book but I thought his story was very interesting. Hacking is an invasion of privacy and a form of thievary and it was very surprising to me that very few agencies wanted to do anything about the hacker when Cliff Stoll told them about his situation.

Family History Work

All of the great innovations of the last few centuries have been inspired by the Lord to facilitate the growth of His latter-day work. One of the greatest of the latter-day works revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith is the salvation of our ancestors in temples. Family history research has become an enormous endeavor with billions of names, dates, and statistics found and recorded. What better use of computers and networks than to greatly simplify this undertaking and fulfill the commandment of God to search out our ancestors? God has provided us with the needed tools and we should take full advantage of them in forwarding His work.