Every time Anon (shortened purposefully) leaks stolen information - it makes me feel there aren't enough Clifford Stolls in the world. In the beginning of the Internet, he was a rock star of Internet security/forensics. I ~so~ wanted to be like him when I started my career.

"Clifford Stoll gained worldwide attention as a cyberspace sleuth when he wrote his bestselling book, The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, the page-turning true story of how he caught a ring of hackers who stole secrets from military computer systems and sold them to the KGB."

"The Cuckoo’s Egg inspired a whole category of books on capturing computer criminals. He began by investigating a 75-cent error in time billing for the university computer lab for which he was systems manager and ended up uncovering a ring of industrial espionage. Working for a year without support from his employers or the government, he eventually tracked the lead to a German spy hacking into American computer networks involved with national security and selling the secrets to the KGB for money and cocaine. " More.

Having said that - even some of the smartest people can make bad predictions.

"In this Newsweek article from 1995, Clifford Stoll suggested it would be unlikely we’d buy books over the web or read newspapers online.

But he didn’t stop there. He didn’t think Internet shopping would work because the Internet was missing salespeople:

We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet — which there isn’t — the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople. " More here.

In 1995 we never imagined Ipads. The closest we got was the Palm Pilot.

In truth I am conflicted about the leaked info. I think someone will eventually get killed, but we also get to find out about a lot of stuff we didn't know.

It is funny Clifford Stoll kinda turned out to be a Luddite. You can't even buy his book The Cuckoo’s Egg on the kindle.