![]() The introduction to Phrack, issue 1 | |
Editor | The Phrack Staff |
---|---|
Former editors | Taran King Cheap Shades Knight Lightning Shooting Shark Elric of Imrryr Crimson Death Dispater Erik Bloodaxe Voyager daemon9/route Phrackstaff Circle of the Lost Hackers |
Categories | Hacking/computer science, phreaking, anarchy |
Frequency | No set frequency |
First issue | November 17, 1985 |
Based in | St. Louis |
Language | English |
Website | phrack.org |
ISSN | 1068-1035 |
Phrack is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. [1] It had a wide circulation which included both hackers and computer security professionals. [2]
Originally covering subjects related to phreaking, anarchy and cracking, [1] its articles also cover a wide range of topics including computer and physical security, hacking, cryptography, counter culture and international news.
Phrack has been described as having "had its finger on the pulse of hacker culture", [3] and being "hugely influential in the early days of hacker culture". [4]
Issues of Phrack are divided in volumes, covering 1 or more years of publication.
Volume | Year | Issues | Editors |
---|---|---|---|
01 | 1985-86 | #1 to #9 | Taran King Cheap Shades |
02 | 1987-88 | #10 to #24 | Taran King Knight Lightning Shooting Shark Elric of Imrryr Crimson Death |
03 | 1989-91 | #25 to #36 | Taran King Crimson Death Dispater |
04 | 1992-93 | #37 to #44 | Dispater Erik Bloodaxe |
05 | 1994 | #45 to #46 | Erik Bloodaxe |
06 | 1995 | #47 | Erik Bloodaxe |
07 | 1996-97 | #48 to #51 | Voyager daemon9/route |
08 | 1998 | #52 to #54 | route |
09 | 1999 | #55 | route |
10 | 2000 | #56 | route |
11 | 2001-05 | #57 to #63 | Phrackstaff |
12 | 2007-08 | #64 to #65 | The Circle of Lost Hackers |
13 | 2009 | #66 | The Circle of Lost Hackers |
14 | 2010-2012 | #67 to #68 | The Phrack Staff |
15 | 2016 | #69 | The Phrack Staff |
16 | 2021-? | #70 to ? | The Phrack Staff |
There were 3 hardcover releases. Each hardcover release contained most (but not all) articles of the e-zine release. Both the hardcover and e-zine were released simultaneously.
Issue | Year | Place | Front Cover |
---|---|---|---|
57 | 2001 | Hackers At Large | ![]() |
62 | 2004 | RuxCon | ![]() |
63 | 2005 | What the Hack | ![]() |
Phrack, first released on November 17, 1985, takes its name from the words "phreak" and "hack". [5] The founding editors of the magazine, known by the pseudonyms "Taran King" and "Knight Lightning", edited most of the first 30 editions. [6] Editions were originally released onto the Metal Shop bulletin board system, where Taran King was a sysop, [1] and widely mirrored by other boards. [5] Its headquarters was in Austin, Texas.
During its first 10 years of publication, Phrack was largely associated with telecommunications fraud, providing material for phreakers and information about arrests in the community through its Phrack World News feature articles. [7] Along with the release of articles such as "Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit" and the editorship of daemon9/route in 1996, Phrack's orientation shifted toward computer security and its focus drew closer to the current definition of hacking.
The 24th issue of Phrack, released February 1989, included a document relating to the workings of Enhanced 911 emergency response systems. [8] This document was an administrative document describing which parts of the organization are responsible for what parts of the E911 system. [9] It had been copied from a BellSouth computer and played a major part in a series of Secret Service raids called Operation Sundevil and featured in Bruce Sterling's book The Hacker Crackdown . Phrack's editor, Knight Lightning, was arrested and charged with access device fraud and transportation of stolen property. [9] The proceedings which ensued are known formally as United States v. Riggs , named for Knight Lightning's co-defendant Robert Riggs.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief supporting Knight Lightning, and helped to get the case dropped [10] [11] by introducing a witness who showed that Bellcore was selling more detailed documentation to the E911 system for as little as $13 to anyone who asked. The E911 document had initially been valued by the prosecution at almost $80,000. [12] The case was then dropped. [9]
After the arrest of Knight Lightning, and the shutdown of Phrack by the US Secret Service in late December 1989 a few weeks after issue #30 was released, some attempts were made to resurrect Phrack under the editorship of Doc Holiday and Crimson Death. However, the lack of consent from the original editor to accept this Phrack Classic led to a new editorship for issue #33 by Dispater under the name Diet Phrack until issue #41.
Issue #42 was released under the editorship of Erik Bloodaxe in 1992. In September 1994, the first Phrack website appeared with release #46, containing all the files from the previous issues.
With the growing use of the internet and interest in computer security, from 1996 Phrack became increasingly oriented toward computer security. The editorship was handed to route along with voyager until 2000 (release #56). During this period, the Phrack website was defaced several times and the magazine was often unavailable. [13]
Since 2001 Phrack has been edited under the alias Phrackstaff.
In 2005, it was announced that Phrack was to come to an end, with the 63rd issue as its last. To commemorate Phrack's final appearance, the issue was to be a hardback edition, released simultaneously at the DEF CON and What the Hack conventions on July 29. An e-zine version of the release followed on August 1. The European printer for the hardcopies of Phrack to be distributed at Defcon refused to fulfil the order once they realized that they were printing a hacking book. Two University of Arizona students filled the gap and printed between 100 and 200 copies of Phrack 63 in time for release at Defcon 13. The copies of Phrack 63 distributed at Defcon 13 are each stamped with a "serial" number on the inside of the last page. It is believed that there are 100 numbered copies of Phrack 63 distributed at Defcon. All copies were hand cut and bound; unnumbered copies may be unreleased "extras", or may have cutting errors that meant they were deemed them unfit for distribution.[ citation needed ]
Issue 63 told readers to "expect a new release", [14] and on May 27, 2007, issue 64 was released by a new board of editors referring to themselves as "The Circle of Lost Hackers" (TCLH). [15] TCLH released issue #65 of Phrack on April 11, 2008 and issue #66 on June 11, 2009. On March 15, 2010, it was announced [16] that the 67th issue would be released on July 11, but it was later postponed. [17]
Phrack issues are released irregularly, and issues are grouped into volumes. Each issue comprises a number of Philes: stand-alone text files of technical or counter-cultural content. Philes are submitted by members of the hacker underground community, and are reviewed by the editors.
In addition to technical articles, Phrack also provided a focus for news and gossip among the hacker community. [3]
In the 1990 National Computer Security Conference, Sheldon Zenner and Dorothy Denning suggested that Phrack articles contained the same factual content in computer and security magazines, but differed in tone. [18]
Phrack is especially popular due to the general high standard of the releases compared to other underground zines, but has made its reputation from a number of high-quality articles.
Several regular columns are present in most issues of Phrack, such as:
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."
Karl Werner Lothar Koch was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.
Gray Areas was a quarterly magazine published from 1992 to 1995 by publisher Netta Gilboa. The magazine was based in Phoenix, Arizona. It won several awards including "One Of The Top Ten Magazines of 1992" by Library Journal. It discussed subcultures involving drugs (narcotics), phreaking, cyberpunk, pornography, the Grateful Dead and related issues. It only published 7 issues, but continues on as a website.
The Conscience of a Hacker is a short essay written on January 8, 1986 by Loyd Blankenship, a computer security hacker who went by the handle The Mentor, and belonged to the second generation of hacker group Legion of Doom.
Loyd Blankenship, better known by his pseudonym The Mentor, is an American computer hacker and writer. He has been active since the 1970s, when he was a member of the hacker groups Extasyy Elite and Legion of Doom.
Operation Sundevil was a 1990 nationwide United States Secret Service crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities." It involved raids in approximately fifteen different cities and resulted in three arrests and the confiscation of computers, the contents of electronic bulletin board systems (BBSes), and floppy disks. It was revealed in a press release on May 9, 1990. The arrests and subsequent court cases resulted in the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The operation is now seen as largely a public-relations stunt. Operation Sundevil has also been viewed as one of the preliminary attacks on the Legion of Doom and similar hacking groups. The raid on Steve Jackson Games, which led to the court case Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service, is often attributed to Operation Sundevil, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation states that it is unrelated and cites this attribution as a media error.
Chris Goggans is an American hacker, a founding member of the Legion of Doom group, and a former editor of Phrack magazine. He is known as an expert in security as well as for his statements on hacker ethics and responsibility.
Craig Neidorf, a.k.a.Knight Lightning, is an American editor. He was one of the founding editors of Phrack Magazine, an ezine.
Hugi is one of the longest lasting, frequently released demoscene and underground disk magazines (diskmag) for IBM-PC.
Bruce Fancher is a former computer hacker and member of the Legion of Doom hacker group. He co-founded MindVox in 1991 with Patrick K. Kroupa.
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier is a work of nonfiction by Bruce Sterling first published in 1992.
Summercon is one of the oldest hacker conventions, and America's oldest and longest-running information security conference. It helped set a precedent for more modern "cons" such as H.O.P.E. and DEF CON, although it has remained smaller and more personal. Summercon has been hosted in cities such as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York City, Austin, Las Vegas, and Amsterdam. Originally run by Phrack, the underground ezine, and held annually in St. Louis, the organizational responsibilities of running Summercon were transferred to clovis in 1998 and the convention took place in Atlanta, dubbed 'Summercon X'.
Electron was the computer handle of Richard Jones, a member of an underground hacker community called The Realm. Jones, born in June 1969, was one of three members of the group arrested in simultaneous raids by the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne, Australia, on 2 April 1990. All three — Nahshon Even-Chaim, Electron and Nom — were convicted of a range of computer crimes involving the intrusion into US defense and government computer systems and the theft of an online computer security newsletter in the late 1980s and early 1990.
The Hacker Files is a twelve issue DC Comics mini-series published from August 1992 to July 1993. It was written by Lewis Shiner and illustrated by Tom Sutton.
The Computer Underground Digest (CuD) was a weekly online newsletter on early Internet cultural, social, and legal issues published by Gordon Meyer and Jim Thomas from March 1990 to March 2000.
Leonard Rose, aka Terminus, is an American hacker who in 1991 accepted a plea bargain that convicted him of two counts of wire fraud stemming from publishing an article in Phrack magazine.
The Anti Security Movement is a movement opposed to the computer security industry. Antisec is against full disclosure of information relating to software vulnerabilities, exploits, exploitation techniques, hacking tools, attacking public outlets and distribution points of that information. The general thought behind this is that the computer security industry uses full disclosure to profit and develop scare-tactics to convince people into buying their firewalls, anti-virus software and auditing services.
Patrick Karel Kroupa, known colloquially as Lord Digital, 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.
In United States v. Riggs, the government of the United States prosecuted Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf for obtaining unauthorized access to and subsequently disseminating a file held on BellSouth's computers. The file, referred to as the E911 file, gave information regarding BellSouth's products implementing 911 emergency telephone services. Riggs and Neidorf were both indicted in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois on numerous charges relating to the dissemination of the E911 text file. As Riggs had previously been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia in relation to the same incident, his charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia. Riggs ultimately pleaded guilty in Georgia and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and two years' supervised release. Neidorf pleaded not guilty in Illinois and the government dropped all charges against Neidorf four days after the trial began.
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).
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