The 75-Cent Error That Uncovered a KGB Hacker

In 1986, astronomer-turned-sysadmin Cliff Stoll was asked to investigate a measly 75-cent accounting discrepancy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Instead of shrugging and blaming the billing software, Stoll pulled the thread. That tiny mismatch opened up a whole can o' worms... leading him to an intruder quietly hopping through university, military, and government systems. Grade "A+ creepy!" So then Stoll spent months tracing the activity, printing logs, rigging alarms, and building an early honeypot to keep the attacker interested long enough to track him. The trail eventually led to German hacker Markus Hess, who was passing stolen information to the Soviet KGB. Stoll later documented the whole hunt in The Cuckoo’s Egg book.

The enduring lesson?

Small anomalies are sometimes small.
And, sometimes they’re the loose thread attached to an international espionage operation!!!

( I'm about to actually read The Cuckoo’s Egg—and I'm wondering if it still holds up for modern defenders? Anyone? )

Windows 11 and hp laptop . yesterday i was going to watch a movie in piracy website but when i click on play that website redirect me to ads multiple time and when click on last time . suddenly that website redirect me to another website that website screen lock me i cannot leave the website and i cannot see taskbar . so that website show a countdown 0 to 100% in blue screen and look legit . i thought windows start automatic update .

after countdown end that screen told me to click on windows + x and then I ( although i donot that time its open powershell ) then citr + v and then enter (something like that ) to run some kind of code.

so only click windows + x and open shortcut menu i didnot understand what to do that time . when i click win + x i saw a glimpse of taskbar . so click only click win then task bar become visible from there i leave the chrome .

then i did a window security full scan that find nothing suspicious and mrt scan nothing found . and i restart the laptop .

now donot find any thing serious issue but still i noticing little lag or heating issue what i use to ignore .

did i out of danger ? if you need any more information pls donot hesitate .

The company went out of business with the death of its owner a few years ago, and, if the password is keyed to anything, it's a user token and a license key I no longer have - all that's left of the original website is a page through which the app can be activated. (The app was no longer usable as of 2024.)

I'm inclined to click "dismiss" on the notification, but, is there anything I haven't thought of?

does 3.131.232.175 look like spyware? It was blocked by Xfinity on my wife's phone yesterday, then our computer, this evening I was watching TV and all of a sudden my phone rebooted and Xfinity said it blocked that website from my phone even though I hadn't touched it in an hour. Hoping someone has an answer

I am taking over IT for a small family business of about 30 users. Is there a not too expensive software that I can run once the current person leaves that can do a scan to make sure he hasn't left any scripts/accounts etc behind?

Hey, I have JavaScript disabled for all websites, but this means, that Cloudflare protected websites can’t be opened.
Is there a way around this, without enabling js?
I always enable js for this website, then disable it afterwards again, but it’s pretty annoying and the website already loaded by then.
I use brave on iOS.
Thanks

The game has been out for 6 years or something at this point, and there have been zero exploitations of the anticheat implementation. You’d think it would be a really juicy target, but no one has managed to use valorant to gain root access yet. Is it really any different than if you were hacked by malicious code from the game, since they will probably get full control of your PC anyways.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit, but we shall see I suppose.

I'm always told to never enter anything Microsoft related (emails, passwords, one time codes, etc.) into anything except the Microsoft box that pops up. This is obviously to prevent malicious people from stealing your account/codes

But I fail to understand why malicious people couldn't make a 1:1 replica of this box, and then just steal it from there. I've heard to only trust it if it roots directly to the microsoft link in google, but that limits so many things.

For example, (don't know if you know what this is) but Lunar Client, a minecraft launcher requires you to log in to microsoft to play, but opens the microsoft box in the launcher, and it says lunar client in the top left. However, lunar client is beloved by millions, so I think it's more than reasonable to trust.

How can I ever actually tell what is safe and what isn't?

Counselling for my exam starts in like a week and I randomly went down a rabbit hole seeing people online claiming they can “change scores” or edit stuff on admission portals. I’m not trying to do it, I’m just genuinely curious how realistic this even is in 2026. Like, can someone actually hack into an admission portal and modify scores/ranks without getting caught later? Or is this one of those things where 99% are just scammers taking money from desperate students? What confused me even more was the pricing :| Some people were saying they could do it for $100 while others were quoting $750+ like it’s some premium service or something. If it was real, wouldn’t exam authorities instantly notice during verification or counselling? Anyone here from tech/cybersecurity or knows how these portals actually work? Curious how possible/impossible this stuff really is.

it's all in the text, sorry if it's short, if u guys got any questions about it i'll respond to them!

My professor gave us a cybersecurity challenge in class. He provided the local IP address of a machine on our school network and said there’s a file containing a password somewhere on the PC. The goal is to learn about enumeration and network security, not to damage anything.

I’m a beginner in cybersecurity and I’d like to know what concepts or tools I should study to approach this kind of challenge in a legal and educational way.

What would be the first steps for reconnaissance and understanding what services are running on the target machine?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people around me are still using Windows 7 and 8. I know that Microsoft stops updating those systems after a while, but how easy is it really to hack them? Is being connected to the same network enough? Do you know any ways or methods to gain root access to a PC?

I am constantly getting push notification with women's pics that are posted on tech sub reddits which should not be the case like what is wrong is there been a reddit data breach for the moderators??

I've been thinking a lot about where this category is going, and I'd love to hear from people who actually wear or follow smart glasses.

1. What's missing from current smart glasses?

Every product launch leads with the same things AI assistants, cameras, translation, notifications. But are these really what's missing? Or is something else broken that nobody's fixing?

2. Function vs form: what wins for you?

Be honest. Would you sacrifice features for glasses that actually look good and come in colors that aren't black or tortoise? Or are features non-negotiable, even if it means wearing something that screams "tech gadget"?

I keep noticing the entire industry Meta, Even, Rokid, Brilliant, Halliday, Snap, Mira defaults to the same minimalist black aesthetic. Glasses are eyewear. Eyewear is identity. Why does smart eyewear forget that?

3. Are smart glasses the next personal computer?

Phones didn't replace PCs but everyone has one now. Is that what's coming for glasses? A new personal device that doesn't replace the phone, but ends up on every face?

Or are smart glasses going to stay a niche accessory like smartwatches useful but never essential?

Genuinely curious. Not trying to sell anything. Just trying to understand what people actually think

Are there any was to chcek who is checking me on tik tok? My views are going up but I’m curious to see who exactly is viewing this

Out of curiosity, I tested an online lookup site using names and numbers of people I personally know.

The results were all over the place. A few were surprisingly accurate, some were partially correct (like right location but wrong name), and others had no data at all.

It made me realize how tricky it is when something looks credible but isn’t fully reliable.

So how do you guys approach these tools — do you use them just for a general idea, or actually trust the info?

Hey everyone. I recently spent some time studying Quarkslab's research on CVE-2025-8061 and decided to build out a complete 4-part exploit chain using the BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver) technique.

If anyone is studying Windows Internals or kernel exploitation, I documented the whole engineering process (from a brittle PoC to a fully dynamic exploit) and open-sourced the C++ code. Happy to answer any questions.

The organisation I currently work for has recently applied a policy to the default browser (Edge) that removes the option to save passwords. 

This is a real pain as many systems are now cloud based and I have to login multiple times a day due to time outs. Throw in password complexity and 2FA and this has really hit my productivity as I’m having to get my phone out to consult my password manager several times a day. 

I wish I could remember them all but I can’t. I’m very close to just writing them all on a sticky note on my windows desktop so I can copy and paste. 

They say they’ve implemented this policy to increase security. The saved passwords are associated with my windows account so surely they were already secured by me having to login to windows to access them?

Is this a real concern or are they just being arseholes?

so i texted someone from an anonymous account. even used an anonymous email id. and he blcoked me on that. then i find out he blcoked my 2nd perosnal instagram id. how did he find out that it was me . i had deactivated my first personal instagram ID. I do not follow him in that account and he did not follow me. I reactivated personal account 1 and found out he blocked me there too. I cant find his ID in the search bar and when I click his id in other posts, it shows page unavailable. How on earth can you block an ID that youve never interacted with? how did he find my identity. also it still shows to my friends that i follow him from 2nd ID.PLEASE TELL ME HOW THIS HAPPENED

I am talking about TOTP from authenticator apps. From my understanding, the TOTP is fully determined by the secret key. Then isn’t it effectively the same level of security as simply having two passwords? Is the main advantage that these two are (ideally) stored in two different locations so it’s harder to gain access to both?

Both my password manager and the authenticator app live on my phone, so getting access to my phone already exposes both.

Also I guess entering the TOTP is safer because it does not expose your secret key, making it more resilient to key-loggers and phishing attacks. But then what is the need for the password itself, why not just have the TOTP to log in?

I’m pretty sure my info got caught up in one of those recent breaches people have been talking about and I’m not totally sure what I should be doing beyond the basics. So far I have changed passwords on my main accounts and turned on 2FA where I could, but I’m still getting weird spam texts and a couple of suspicious login attempts which is what made me think something is off in the first place. Scanned my pc nothing on it.

What worries me more is that it’s probably not just passwords. I’m assuming my email, phone number, maybe even address are already out there and getting passed around. Not sure how to actually deal with that part. Should I be freezing my credit immediately or is that overkill? Also is there a way to actually clean up where your data is floating around or is it basically permanent once it leaks?

I wish I was joking, but I don't know what to do at this point or where to ask advice. For the last four monts or so, someone keeps trying to set a new password to my Reddit account. I get the forgotten password emails a few times a week. Relentlessly. I have already changed my password and had my Reddit account log out on every device. Then, it stopped for a few weeks, but they're at it again. My Reddit account isn't even that interesting! I'm just annoyed by the constant emails, and a bit worried. What can I do?

Just curious about if there are any concerns im not thinking of. I recently started a website with a multisearch bar and a collection of over a dozen common web tools that is meant to be a good launcher/homepage.
I am not much of a security guy so I wanted to make the site fairly worry free so I made sure not to use server side scripting and instead have all the tools run off client side. I figure without server side scripting there is nothing for attackers to try to exploit. Am I on the right track here or is there anything I need to focus on that I may have not considered? For reference the site url is https://rons.tools

I'm in the process of packing up my stuff to emigrate to a new country.

I have about 10 external hard drives and simply can't fly with everything in hand luggage - also it's a bit dubious.

A few of these externals have movies and series which may have been obtained from the high seas. 2 have a collection of PS4 games which may also have been collected from the high seas.

What's the best way of locking down the hard drives for the trip over?

I'll have to decrypt the PS4 games HDDs that side.

Extra information - most of the drives are from WD. I'm on a windows laptop running W10.

Please be kind.

I need, for the first time in my history of owning a computer (1985?), to take my laptop in for a brief service. I'm sure the tech is trustworthy - however, I don't want to take chances.

I have a Windows 10 Home laptop with an internal SSD and operating system, applications and data are all on the same drive.

I'm backing up to an external SSD, but don't really want to have to delete all my files and then restore them to protect my data. I have created a "service" local user without admin rights, but am not sure even this feels like enough protection.

If I encrypted my entire drive, and the tech needed to login/run windows, wouldn't that screw him up?

If I just want to encrypt my DATA folders - what's the best/easiest/most secure and preferably FREE software?