The Cuckoo's Egg Post

Knowledge is power, and who you give it to can be a very important decision. Cliff details how he searched for traces of the hacker, and one of the things he did was try to block off alternate paths that the hacker may have had. He did this by following the hacker's trail and informing victims of what had occurred. If he had spread the hackers tactics publicly, there would have been not just one hacker, but many copycat hackers exploiting the same weaknesses, a few of which may have had even more nefarious purposes. In addition, depending on how widely the knowledge was spread, many of the would be victims would not have been notified of the issue, causing the problem to expand and increase. On another note, due to the cautious nature of the hacker, Cliff wasn't able to ask explicitly for information on the usenet, fearing that the hacker would catch wind of Cliff's efforts and find another way to his goal.