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Phrack E-zine Comes To An End
Flammable writes "Since 1985 Phrack has been releasing ezines to public about Hacking, Cracking, Radio, Social Engineering, etc. All things come to an end, and Phrack is no different: the last issue, #63, is accepting articles from the community now."
I could always find something interesting in useful in Phrack.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
2600 magazine seems to keep a little more up-to-date than phrack anyways.
its already gone.
It says Number of users exceeded.
Frankly I think it's lame.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
A babe in a g-string and a top that shows a bit of bottom nipplage, holding a smoking gun. What's the purpose of it, other than male sex appeal?
It seems to have been killed now...CONGRATULATIONS, you've slashdotted the body into its grave!
It seems they have been using the same server since 1985.
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I wrote Several articles for that mag when I was a wee youngster.. Mostly anarchy and drugs, and whatnot. Always liked the magazine. It was pretty funny when the Secret Service tried to prosecute the editor of Phrack.. They did a great job of demonstrating their ignorance of both computers and the law! The mag came a long way, then went a long way. To tell you the truth I wasnt aware it was still around..
What about hackaday.com?
Judging by the release rate of the last few years "apathy" on the part of the Phrack editors seems to be the order of the day, but that's perhaps a little unfair. There have been scores of papers published that would have been worthy of Phrack at its best in that time. The problem is that everyone writing such papers can just as easily create their own website and publish their works there. Why wait for what might be several months to see you work published for what little kudos being published in Phrack still has left and risk someone else stealing your fifteen minutes of fame?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
What's wrong with posting a coral cache'd link to the main story? or even a mirrordot?
Phrack.org
I didn't read it a lot, but every time i picked it up, it was always useful
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
The way Phrack has presented security information with a sense of humor has always made Phrack an entertaining read. Even when the articles weren't funny, and were serious, the tone had already been set with the loopback section. It is sad that Phrack will no longer be something to look forward to.
However, anyone who has followed Phrack will admit that it peaked long ago, and has slowly been going away. Phrack closing shouldn't be a shock to anyone. I'm glad someone finally decided to say 'it's over' rather than having one issue a year.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Hackers should use their powers for good, not evil. They should stop spending energy trying to break, take over, invade, infect, and steal from others.
I completely understand the thrill that comes with probing a system for vulnerabilities. Hacking is a drug... it's a power trip to take control of another host. But that power comes with karma of the worst kind. Whether a hacker hurts an individual, a company, or corporation... their deeds are not any more acceptable. Even if they're smart enough to cover their tracks, they will be punished for their crimes.
Fuck hackers! Fuck the hackers that shut down my companies when worms or virus compromised security. Fuck the hackers with their clusters of zombie machines running PsyBNC. Fuck every single one of them that constantly pound my servers with brute force attacks. Fuck'em all. Their time for comeuppance will arrive.
If you want to hack: Go try to break a security protocol then publish a whitepaper on it. Track down a hacker and terminate their exploited host by contacting its admin. Go patch an open source project. Go make something of your own instead of just raping other peoples property. Don't destroy... create! Your life is a waste if what you do with it is evil.
To blog is sublime
"Frack."
I wonder if it is succeeding. Anyone have any statistics on that sort of thing?
As someone who has not only read but also studied every single issue of Phrack I propose that in the very last issue they also publish the All-time Top 10 Articles List as voted by readers and I hereby nominate Aleph One's legendary article Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit (Volume 7, Issue 49, November 08, 1996).
So let's hear your nominations... Yes, I know phrack.org has been slashdotted (commiserations to John Kozubik of Johncompanies in San Diego), but that's the point - if you are a true diehard fan of Phrack you already have all the issues mirrored locally because you've studied them thoroughly.
In my early days I got papers out of HAL-PC BBS in houston, a chinese friend was the first real hacker I knew. Hacker in the truest sense, he understood every part of technology. Shortly after I found a reference to Phrack on one of the binary files he'd edited with a Hex dumping tool. That caught my attention but I had no access to Phrack. Years later as the web was born I remembered the name and got my issue of Phrack online, don't remember which one but was into the early 90's. Assembly language, phones, cool C "progz", Ascii art and UNIX when UNIX still had not a Linux offspring.
I will not deny that this news comes as a bit of a shock. All things must end, therefore in a saddened state I say goodbye to you old teacher and friend. You will be missed.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
> Wow.. nearly forgotten about it. ...phractionary!
Not me, my main password at work is phrack007.
(frak-double-ohh-seven)
This is a damn shame. We need a wiki-phrack...
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
I remember back in the day in 1996, one of the first things I did when I got my internet connection was downloaden phrack.
:-(
I am really sad to see it go. The articles were way better than those in 2600, and it was well written and funny too.
Seems that alle the good zines are gone or dying a similar death (Confidence remains high, B4B0, HUGI, Veracity and others). This seems to be the state of the hacker scene today as well. It's all become either commercial or totally lame.
This is a sad, sad day for me as it doens't look like anyone else is starting a zine of comparible quality. Please for the love of god start something not meant for lame ass high school newbies with "safe", cool hacking "tutorials". Telnetting to port 25 is NOT advanced. Phrack, you WILL be misses
A lot of web sites seem to use MySQL..
It is official; Netcraft confirms: Phrack is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered hax0r community when IDC confirmed that Phrack market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all k-l33t readers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Phrack has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Phrack is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent International Blue Boxing Competition.
You don't need to be an Erik Bloodaxe to predict Phrack's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Phrack faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Phrack because Phrack is dying. Things are looking very bad for Phrack. As many of us are already aware, Phrack continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
There can no longer be any doubt: Phrack is dying.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
well, i do get a little tired of reading this in bugtraq/securityfocus and then 10 minutes later seeing it on /. ... but here's my .02:
... which is (minus hardcover) is what they have been doing?
/snip- /snip
the release i saw in bugtraq (i think, they all end up in the same folder) said they are going to goto hardcover and e-zine format
(not trying to be a karma whore, the mysql died apparently on them:)
in the email to bugtraw@securityfocus.com:
----
Deadline: 10 July 2005 at 11:59pm
http://www.phrack.org/cfp_final.txt
---
Phrackstaff is please to bring you our LAST EVER CALL FOR PAPAERS for the FINAL RELEASE of PHRACK.
We are preparing for a hardcover and ezine release at a major hacker convention near you!
going on to say they'll keep the website up for two years after, "more about the decision in the release."
one: i didn't know phrack HAD released anything in any real ammount of time recently. two: my mirror of phrack issues stops at 41, and is dated december 21, 1992. three: i always liked cDc better. different content, granted, but it was a much better 'publication' all together.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
on an aside: copy/paste from kmail via vnc doesn't work, so i re-typed (with errors) the previous post as best i could.
i appologize, and i will work to get my clipboard working across all platforms.
bugtraw? i was some bugtraw.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
I didn't even realize they were around that long. 20 years is a pretty long run.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
Not much, but here's mirrordot anyway... mirrordot front page
... at least Blacklisted is back ... damn
i thought phrack became l0pht, started doing security type stuff, but got away from the phone-phreaking type stuff in the early 90's? i've been wrong before though ...
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
The current "anonymous" batch editors have outgrown the zine. They were a bad choice to begin with, but regardless, that's happened to phrack before. On a regular basis. Every generation or so passes on phrack to the next. It's tradition.
What's different about the current batch of editors was their intense arrogance and unusualy patronizing attitude towards the scene. Phrack hasn't been about the computer underground for years. The last ten years have turned Phrack into a prestigious journal for security research.
The anarchistic underground roots of phrack have been whitewashed away by the latest batch of editors. Go and read the issues from 1980s, early 90s.
The reason this happened was that when the scene moved to the Internet in the mid 90s the MIT hacker memes battled it out against "war games" hacker meme of the 80s. Hacker still has an 80s meaning for the general public, but the MIT hacker meme clearly won amongst the technically savy. The "cracker" and "script kiddy" memes were part of a process that turned Phrack's underground past into an embarrassment.
So Phrack gradually turned against it's own roots. It's not for the hacker community by the hacker community anymore. Far from it. The current incarnation of Phrack actually spreads hypocritical anti-hacker memes between it's covers. It's BY $150-an-hour-security-consultants FOR our-reputation-in-the-security-industry.
Phrack has been hijacked by sellouts.
Aside from their snobbish elitist attitude, what have the recent editors of Phrack contributed? The articles are written by others. Try reading the "linenoise" section written by the Phrack editors sometime. Degrading newbies never gets old for these guys. Ha ha! you're all so stupid! We're so uber elite!
So now what's happened is that these guys are so old school, so been-there-done-that, patronizing assholes that they've decided it's time for Phrack to die rather than evolve.
Here's an alternative to killing off a 20+ year tradition: run a competition amongst would-be editors who can publish the best next issue of phrack. Then allow the PUBLIC to vote amongst alternatives as to whom succeeds the current editors.
The team that manages to hack together the best edition of phrack 64 wins.
Phrack is dead. Long live phrack!
Nope - l0pht went 100% commercial and are/were unrelated to phrack. Your confusion probably stems from the frequent changes of staff (generally in a downward direction).
and you should probably change your password, within the next week maybe.
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
I'll do it for him...
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Slahsdot strikes again!
Full content of website is archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.phrack.org /
This Is Not a Sig
At least 2600 is still up.
--
make install -not war
that doesn't show up on most technical sites because most "tech" sites pander to not-so-technical individuals.
Case in point: Slashdot
Don't waste time debating cracker/hacker for
the 5 billionth time, the word 'hacker' was long
ago taken over by the crackers who were called
hackers by themselves and the media. 'Hacker' does not mean what it did in the earlier generations of computing anymore.
The term has evolved as all things do.
In any case, the difference between cracker/hacker is a purely pedantic issue at this point.
If you prefer to think of 'hackers' as different, then just imagine every instance of the word "Hacker" you see here and in other media replaced
with the word "Cracker"
This will be the intended interpretation of
the author 99% of the time. Only in elitist/nerdy
old-school "hacker" groups will you ever find
any wide acceptance for the the older interpretation of the word hacker.
The word hacker already has strong negative
connotations in the world, and there's no
chance of any recovery possible at this point.
If you call yourself a hacker, and are not a person who breaks into other people's computers,
writes viruses, etc, then GET A NEW CATCH PHRASE.
So how many people tried to login to his /. account using this password....?
To add one other thing, we cannot expect even the whitest of white-hat hacking to remain legal on it's own. **AA, BSA, MS and countless others all work toward using the legal system to slowly break down the digital rights we have.
The reason why Emmanuel and others (including Micheal who gave a talk at the last HOPE[Hackers On Planet Earth] conference.[MP3 here http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/mp3/drm.mp3 ] ) have started paying attention to politics and particpating in them is because they started affecting what hackers did. They're sideing with the left because the left is more in tune to the message.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
...brings me back. They were an indispensible resource back in the BBS days, and always informative.
I guess that's the way the times work, though.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
PHRAK back issues
Plenty of mirrors, and, huh.. there *used* to be a torrent..
http://torrent.textfiles.com/
Sorry, Jason Scott!
wow... what can I say... wow. Someone posts an article here about the final issue of Phrak, and then the slashdot community causes their server to combust... I guess there won't be an issue 63 after all ;-)
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
I'm more or less with you on your comments, parent poster - but I also think it's wise to be careful talking about hacking in black and white "good" vs. "evil" terms.
Like almost everything in life, there are complex shades of grey. It's fine to lecture people on how much better it would be for everyone involved if they broke security protocols on their own time and hardware, and then published "white papers" on what they found. But when you're a 15 year old kid, you probably wouldn't find any of that "interesting" at all. You aren't tinkering around with hacking/cracking because you wanted another "homework assignment" to take on. It's purely for the thrill and bragging rights to your like-minded buddies.
I'm not saying this gives them "carte blanche" to go out and destroy other people's systems... But I guess what I *am* saying is, magazines like Phrack and 2600 started out (and thrived because of) the rebellious spirit of bored teens. Sometimes, the only way you'll really get people to find flaws in a product's security is by putting it in place and seeing who ends up breaking it in order to do something you see as "evil".
Take those dial-type Master locks for example. Before kids were messing around with them, trying to figure out how they could "feel" the tumblers inside them click to find the combinations on them, most people assumed they were pretty secure locks. (Short of a bolt-cutters, you weren't likely to get by them.) After kids (obviously motivated by the "evil" desire to break into other kids' lockers in schools) leaked out the secrets to picking these things, and it got passed around the Internet, Master Lock, Inc. made improvements to the lock and started selling revised versions.
I think we'd *still* be using an older revision Master lock today if we waited around for someone to put on a "white hat" and hack their own Master lock purely to "do good" by writing up a white paper on it when they finished.
This is a bit like Cher announcing her Final Farewell Tour three years after her Very Last, I Really Mean It This Time Farewell Tour. Or the CdC announcing they've disbanded. Believe it when I don't see it.
SoupIsGood Food
I used to listen to his radio show, Off The Hook, and while his ideology could be a bit much to take sometimes, I was always impressed by his shear stubbornness in standing up for hacker rights. He's been sued by Ford over domain name trademarks and the MPAA for linking to DeCSS, and fought both lawsuits to the finish. 2600 also supported Kevin Mitnick in a big way, when the EFF wouldn't. And HOPE is arguably the most important hacker conference on the planet. While I haven't read 2600 magazine in a while, from what I remember (circa mid/late 90's) it was always a bit uninteresting. And it certainly didn't compare to Phrack, which has always sort of been the peer reviewed journal of hackerdom. But there's more to 2600 than the magazine.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/f745fb20b1d50ad22 90fb117e11a1465/index.html
me too!
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
...I immediately stop reading. It's just such a silly old cliche. Unless someone takes money to espouse a point of view with which they disagree, they have NOT 'sold out.'
I got there first and changed it ;^)
I haven't even read Phrack (Phreaking & Hacking) since its founder dropped off a 6-pack of Budweiser on my stoop out here one day years back.
But I thought that was one of the best...Thanksgiving dinners that I've had in a long time.
And Phrack was one heck of one hell of a magazine. That was one byooful magazine thar, bud.
W4NUA standin bye and monitrin
slashdot: A failed experiment.
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That's a sign... Bye bye phrack
Help me get a PSP! Who can afford s
There's a big difference in being dead and being underground. It's not "dead," just not a lot of people know about it... and that's a really good thing especially because of the type of magazine it is. And I really wonder what motivates them to stop publishing their ezines... I know it has nothing to do about not having a large audience... I kept up with it from time to time, but I never got to read every single ezine through and through... It really makes me sad to hear this news though.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
2600 still has some good quality information coming from it.
For example, volume 21, number 2 had a great article on magstrips. The article its self really went into a lot of details relating to how the hardware works, with some really great diagrams relating to serial, and a great bit of code relating to how to read the data passed from the reader through serial.
I guess it depends on what you expect from the zine, but I think for their customer base (younger kids interested in computers) this is a great piece of information, they get into really one of the best steps for kids to learn about communicating with hardware, and the article really helps walk through the beginning steps to get people modivated to really try to expierment.
TruePunk | Games
==Phrack Inc.== Volume Three, Issue Thirty-one, Phile #1 of 9 Issue XXXI Index P H R A C K 3 1 05/28\90 Welcome to a new begining of Phrack Inc. Yes, Phrack is not dead. On the contrary, Phrack will and can't ever die. Phrack is more than just BTW, I had to format the above slightly so I could post it. /. bounced it with the error message
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters."
Is it trying to tell us something?
Damn, Phrack was one of the best hacker zines. :-( I really could cry ...
At least 2600 ist still there, and Blacklisted!411 ( http://www.blacklisted411.net ) is back again.
To all hackers out there: Support Blacklisted!411 and 2600 as much as possible by buying their issues and sending them articles. At least we want to keep 2 zines...
What a bummer. Phrack was the "news-zine of record" for the h/p scene. After ErikB quit though, I dunno who was even running it and it seemed to drop out of the picture (no offense). No more big superstar presence at the helm. Well, I hope somebody that really has the drive to do a newsy 'zine takes over. As they used to say on Hee-Haw, "Saaaaaaaaa-LUTE!" G. Ratte'/cDc
G. Ratte'/cDc "I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce."
You can meet skyper, Phrack's Editor in Chief at BCS2005 in Jakarta.
Mind Booster Noori