Markus Hess

Markus Hess, a German citizen, is best known for his endeavours as a hacker in the late 1980s. Alongside fellow hackers Dirk Brzezinski and Peter Carl, Hess hacked into networks of military and industrial computers based in the United States, Europe and the East Asia, and sold the information to the Soviet KGB for US$54,000. The hacked material included "sensitive semiconductor, satellite, space, and aircraft technologies".

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

Hess's hacking activities were discovered in 1986 by Clifford Stoll, an astronomer turned systems administrator of the computer center of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) in California. Stoll's first job duty was to track a 75 cent accounting error in the LBL system. Early in his investigation, Stoll discovered that the LBL computer system was compromised and that the hacker had obtained "root" or systems privileges. Such a security compromise was more important than the accounting error. Stoll eventually discovered how the hacker broke in and identified the hacker's activities on the system. LBL management considered attempting to seal off the system from this hacker, but Stoll and his colleagues convinced LBL's management that this would not be effective. Ultimately, they installed a honeypot to ensnare the hacker.