PHRACK Final

lbolla writes ""...a glorious era comes to an end. #63 will be _our_ last PHRACK RELEASE -- ever... Phrackstaff is pleased to bring you _our_ last ever call for papers for the final release of phrack. We are preparing for a hardcover and ezine release at a major hacker convention near you! We ask everyone to submit a paper. Great care will be taken to ensure that only the best articles make it into PHRACK FINAL.""

Comments

_their_ last release

[SimonShine]

Considering their emphasis in the official announcement, one is likely to think that they expect another body to take over the release, but haven't found any suitable. It is a common pattern to announce the end of something, then to discover this great possibility for a sequel. I have no doubt they're different.

Gone....for the moment

[Red Moose]

Phrack has been on a "final issue ever" several times. There's very little going on these days in it and the main contributors seem to be idiots with very little l33t sk1llz. Gone are the days of VAX hacking, the best techniques for trashing and how to make petrol bombs. These days everyone has open access to all of this information and more with google and basic internet. I wonder what happened to Taran King and Knight Lightning .......

Re:Gone....for the moment

[Zocalo]

I wonder what happened to Taran King and Knight Lightning

"Operation Sundevil", an attempt to crackdown on the Legion of Doom cracking and phreaking group, happened. Craig Neidorf (Knight Lightning), was indicted, subjected to search and seizures by the US Secret Service, brought to a jury trial and finally had all charges dropped by the prosecution. He's kept a pretty low profile ever since, or at least has been a lot more careful with covering his tracks. Taran King appears to have been spooked and dropped out of the scene around the same time, or is also being a lot more careful.

In any case, there doesn't seem to be much on the pair since the end of the crackdown started by Operation Sundevil in the early 1990's. Perhaps this "final" issue of Phrack should include a "Where are they now?" article on past editors and other once prominent members of the Phrack community. Then again, given the number of convictions that were successful, that's not very likely to make for a very upbeat article about hacking to go out on, is it?

Re:Who?

[EZmagz]

I totally agree. Phrack used to be THE e-zine when it came to anything related to computer security and the like. As you mentioned, their buffer overflow in issue 49 is hands-down one of the best explanations of how stack overflows work, and is usually referenced in any current article dealing with the subject.

One thing that turned me away from Phrack a while back (around Y2K-ish?) was the total lack of editing and their focus on newbish-related topics. Older copies of the e-zine contained a plethora of articles on advanced computer security topics, and were very well-written. Looking through the last few issues of Phrack it's painfully obvious that's not the case anymore. Current articles are geared towards script kiddies and are written in broken english.

Of course maybe I'm just biased because I fell out of the "underground" scene around the time that the accessability of Phrack-related information became magnitudes easier to obtain and the scarcity factor was lost.