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. [1]
PhreakNIC consists of presentations on a variety of technical subjects, sometimes related to a conference theme. There is also a film room showing anime and technology-related videos from popular culture. The Nashville Linux Users Group held a Linux Installfest from PhreakNIC 3 through PhreakNIC X.
PhreakNIC is attended by hackers and other technology enthusiasts from across the United States, although, as a regional conference, most of its attendees come from a two-state radius around Tennessee, including groups from Missouri, Ohio, Washington, DC, Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama.
As PhreakNIC has been held in downtown Nashville, near the Tennessee Titans stadium, the exact date for PhreakNIC was previously not announced each year until the NFL released its schedule in April. PhreakNIC is intentionally scheduled not to coincide with a Titans home game, to give conference organizers full reign over the venue. However, PhreakNIC is typically held around the time of Halloween.
Tennessee, officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Tennessee's population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million.
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.
Murfreesboro is a city in, and county seat of, Rutherford County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 152,769 according to the 2020 census, up from 108,755 residents certified in 2010. Murfreesboro is located in the Nashville metropolitan area of Middle Tennessee, 34 miles (55 km) southeast of downtown Nashville.
DEF CON is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked". The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer- and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions. Contests held during the event are extremely varied and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat.
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.
COMDEX was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector. COMDEX exhibitions were held in many other countries from 1982 to 2005, with 185 shows altogether. The first COMDEX was held in 1979 at the MGM Grand, with 167 exhibitors and 3904 attendees. In 1981, the first COMDEX/Spring was held in New York City.
Nissan Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Owned by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, it is primarily used for football and is the home field of the Tennessee Titans of the National Football League (NFL) and the Tigers of Tennessee State University. The stadium is the site of the TransPerfect Music City Bowl, a postseason college football bowl game played each December, and from 2020 until 2021 the home field of Nashville SC of Major League Soccer (MLS). Nissan Stadium is used for concerts such as those affiliated with the CMA Music Festival each June. The stadium also has facilities to host public events, meetings, and parties.
The Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference series is a hacker convention sponsored by the security hacker magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly that until 2020 was typically held at Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan, New York City. Occurring biennially in the summer, there have been fourteen conferences to date. HOPE 2020, originally planned to be held at St. John's University, was instead held as a nine-day virtual event from July 25 to August 2, 2020. The fourteenth HOPE, "A New HOPE," was held at St. John's University in Queens from July 22 to 24, 2022. HOPE features talks, workshops, demonstrations, tours, and movie screenings.
linux.conf.au is Australasia's regional Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different Australian or New Zealand city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local volunteers.
Jason Scott Sadofsky, more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped Disk, and textfiles. He has been called "the figurehead of the digital archiving world".
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.
Black Hat Briefings is a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Black Hat brings together a variety of people interested in information security ranging from non-technical individuals, executives, hackers, and security professionals. The conference takes place regularly in Las Vegas, Barcelona, London and Riyadh. The conference has also been hosted in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. in the past.
The Digital DawgPound is a group of hackers, best known for a series of articles in hacker magazines such as 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and Make, the long-running webcast Binary Revolution Radio, and a very active set of forums with posts from high-profile hackers such as Strom Carlson, decoder, Phiber Optik and StankDawg. The stated mission of the DDP is to propagate a more positive image of hackers than the negative mass media stereotype. The group welcomes new members who want to learn about hacking, and attempts to teach them more positive aspects and steer them away from the negative aspects, by reinforcing the hacker ethic. Their goal is to show that hackers can, and regularly do, make positive contributions not only to technology, but to society as a whole.
Tom Cross, also known as Decius, is an American computer security expert and hacker.
OSUNY was a dial-up bulletin board that was run by two different sysops in the 1980s, "Sysop" while in Scarsdale, New York, and Frank Roberts in White Plains, New York. Named for the Ohio Scientific computer it originally ran on, it attracted a large group of hackers, phone phreaks, engineers, computer programmers, and other technophiles. It remained a haven almost exclusively for the hacker/phreaker community until gaining notoriety through mention in a Newsweek article, Hacking Through NASA: A threat- or only an embarrassment, and mention in the book The Hacker Crackdown as a favored hangout of the notorious hacker group The Legion of Doom, after which it was shuttered, and another board was brought up as a "replacement" known as The Crystal Palace, which was short-lived. OSUNY was restarted soon after, using an Altos 5-15D running MP/M and the continuously evolving Citadel/UX software. Also in the mid-1980s it became the first BBS to be associated with 2600 Magazine. It ran via dial-up until its closing around 1988.
LugRadio was a British podcast on the topic of Linux and events in the free and open source software communities, as well as coverage of technology, digital rights and politics.
The 51st Indiana Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
A computer security conference is a convention for individuals involved in computer security. They generally serve as meeting places for system and network administrators, hackers, and computer security experts.
Nick Levay (1977–2021) also known as Rattle was an American computer security expert and hacker. He was the Chief Security Officer at the Council on Foreign Relations and other organizations such as Carbon Black and the Center for American Progress. From 2018–2021 he was the President of the NGO-ISAC, an Information Sharing and Analysis Center nonprofit serving US-based non-governmental organizations.
The Tennessee Conference is an Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. This conference serves the congregations in Middle Tennessee. The Tennessee Conference falls within the Nashville Episcopal Area which also includes the Memphis Conference. The Tennessee Conference is part of the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference, and is over seen by resident Bishop Reverend Bill McAllily. Bishop McAlilly was elected to this post in 2012. The episcopal office is located in downtown Nashville at 1908 Grand Avenue, Nashville, TN 37212.