Phrack is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest. It has a wide circulation which includes both hackers and computer security professionals.
2600: The Hacker Quarterly is an American seasonal publication of technical information and articles, many of which are written and submitted by the readership, on a variety of subjects including hacking, telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer "underground."
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.
A red box is a phreaking device that generates tones to simulate inserting coins in pay phones, thus fooling the system into completing free calls. In the United States, a nickel is represented by one tone, a dime by two, and a quarter by a set of five. Any device capable of playing back recorded sounds can potentially be used as a red box. Commonly used devices include modified Radio Shack tone dialers, personal MP3 players, and audio-recording greeting cards.
John Thomas Draper, also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman, is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a widely known figure within the computer programming world and the hacker and security community, and generally lives a nomadic lifestyle.
The Conscience of a Hacker is a small essay written January 8, 1986 by a computer security hacker who went by the handle of The Mentor, who belonged to the second generation of hacker group Legion of Doom.
Oldham County High School (OCHS) is a public high school in Buckner, Kentucky, United States. It was founded in 1953 and has a student body of approximately 1,600 students in 9th through 12th grades. OCHS was given the National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence award in 1985 and 2002.
Joybubbles, born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of "172 or something". Joybubbles died at his Minneapolis home on August 8, 2007 (aged 58). According to his death certificate, he died of natural causes with congestive heart failure as a contributing condition.
PhreakNIC is an annual hacker and technology convention held in Nashville, Tennessee. It is organized by the Nashville 2600 Organization and draws upon resources from SouthEastern 2600 (se2600). The Nashville Linux User Group was closely tied with PhreakNIC for the first 10 years, but is no longer an active participant in the planning. First held in 1997, PhreakNIC continues to be a long-time favorite among hackers, security experts and technology enthusiasts. PhreakNIC currently holds claim as the oldest regional hacker con and is one of the few hacker cons run by a 501(c)(3) tax-free charity. The conference attracts about 350 attendees.
The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking group. Today the PLA hosts the popular prank call podcast the Snow Plow Show which it has hosted since 2012.
David Blake, also known as StankDawg, is the founder of the hacking group Digital DawgPound (DDP) and a long-time member of the hacking community. He is known for being a regular presenter at multiple hacking conferences, but is best known as the creator of the "Binary Revolution" initiative, including being the founding host and producer of Binary Revolution Radio, a long-running weekly Internet radio show which ran 200 episodes from 2003 to 2007.
A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the "computer underground".
A phreaking box is a device used by phone phreaks to perform various functions normally reserved for operators and other telephone company employees.
Virgil Griffith, also known as Romanpoet, is an American programmer. He worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner. He has published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory. Griffith was arrested in 2019, and in 2021 pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate U.S. laws relating to money laundering using cryptocurrency and sanctions related to North Korea. On April 12, 2022, Griffith was sentenced to 63 months imprisonment for assisting North Korea with evading sanctions.
Infonomicon Computer Club is a premier hacking organization, comprising over a dozen people from across the United States. Once called Infonomicon Media, a majority of the group members produce hacker-related webcasts, including both podcasts and TV webcasts. The group changed its name in early 2006 to the Infonomicon Computer Club, and has since started work on projects outside the media realm. Members of the ICC have done many presentations at various hacker conventions across the country, the most recent being PhreakNIC 19 in November 2015.
Patrick Karel Kroupa is an American writer, hacker and activist. Kroupa was a member of the Legion of Doom and Cult of the Dead Cow hacker groups and co-founded MindVox in 1991, with Bruce Fancher. He was a heroin addict from age 14 to 30 and got clean through the use of the hallucinogenic drug ibogaine.
Ed Piskor is an alternative comics artist operating out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a former student of The Kubert School and is best known for his artistic collaborations with underground comics pioneers Harvey Pekar of American Splendor fame, and Jay Lynch who illustrates Garbage Pail Kids. He has a cult following amongst minicomic fans with his series Deviant Funnies and Isolation Chamber.
Plover-NET, often misspelled Plovernet, was a popular bulletin board system in the early 1980s. Hosted in New York state and originally owned and operated by a teenage hacker who called himself Quasi-Moto, whom was a member of the short lived yet famed Fargo 4A phreak group. The popular bulletin board system attracted a large group of hackers, telephone phreaks, engineers, computer programmers, and other technophiles, at one point reaching over 600 users until LDX, a long distance phone company, began blocking all calls to its number (516-935-2481).