A cuckoo's egg is a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

for

brood parasitism Brood parasites are animals that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its ow ...

, where a parasitic bird deposits its egg into a host's nest, which then incubates and feeds the chick that hatches, even at the expense of its own offspring. That original biological meaning has been extended to other uses, including one which references

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their priva ...

and other pieces of malware.

History

The concept has been in use in the study of

in birds since the 19th century. It first evolved a

metaphoric A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

meaning of "misplaced trust", wherein the chick hatched of a

cuckoo Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separ ...

's egg incubated and raised by unknowing victim parents will first begin to starve and outgrow them as it or they kill off the birds' legitimate offspring. The first well known application to

spycraft Spycraft is a d20 and OGL-based role-playing game dealing with superspies and modern action. Originally published by the Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), it is currently published under licence by Crafty Games. History Originally envisi ...

was in the 1989 book '' The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'' by

Clifford Stoll Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to t ...

, in which Stoll deployed a honeypot to catch a cyber

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

that had accessed the secure computer system of the classified U.S. government Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Stoll chronicles the so-called 'Cuckoo's Egg Investigation’, "a term coined by American press to describe (at the time) the farthest reaching computer-mediated espionage penetration by foreign agents”, which was also known as Operation Equalizer initiated and executed by the KGB through a small cadre of German hackers. In his book Stoll describes the hacker employing a

Trojan horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...

strategy to penetrate the secure Livermore Laboratory computer system:

I watched the cuckoo lay its egg: once again, he manipulated the files in my computer to make himself super-user. His same old trick: use the Gnu-Emacs move-mail to substitute his tainted program for the system's atrun file. Five minutes later, shazam! He was system manager. ''The Cuckoo's Egg'', Stoll, Clifford, Doubleday, 1989, , p. 123

References

{{reflist Metaphor

History

See also

References