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PHRACK Final

Posted by Hemos on Mon May 30, 2005 11:30 AM
from the call-for-papers-and-so-much-more dept.
Announcements Programming Technology
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.""
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  • Uh... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Malevolyn (776946) *
    Didn't they do a final call for papers a few months ago?

  • An extra bit for their issue counter... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2005, @11:34AM (#12677004)
    ... and we could have issues up to 127

  • _their_ last release (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SimonShine (795915) on Monday May 30 2005, @11:37AM (#12677019) Homepage
    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.

  • Who? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Grendel Drago (41496)
    I faintly remember something about them, in the days of blueboxing and greedily awaiting the newest cDc release.

    But, uh, isn't it a little past their time? What has Phrack done, y'know, since people started using the internet instead of phone lines?

    No, I'm really asking, because my workplace proxy blocks phrack.org.

    --grendel drago
    • What the frack is Phrack?

    • Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)

      by diente (709999) on Monday May 30 2005, @11:53AM (#12677109)
      Man, they made really a lot of big things, "Smashing the stack for fun and profit" in Phrack 49, its maybe the bible for actual Exploits ( BoF ). Or the Fyodor paper for Remote OS Detection.... Those where great times. In fact i dont know a single actual publication that has that professional level. Those people are real security specialist. I'll miss that e-zine

      • Re:Who? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by EZmagz (538905) on Monday May 30 2005, @01:16PM (#12677585) Homepage
        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.

        • Re:Who? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by grazzy (56382)
          Phrack lost it's glamour when they put them on the net. Lost are the days when you had to struggle to find the latest issue on your local underground bulletin board system.

        • Re:Who? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by noahm (4459)
          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.

          I think a big part of the problem is that computer security research has gone mainstream. It's now very common to see Usenix's ;login: or the ACM's Communications packed full of new research. Bet

    • But, uh, isn't it a little past their time

      Someone doesn't understand the "retirement" concept.
      • ... the answer I get here is better, more informative, and more condensed than what I can get from archive.org, Google's cache or whatever?

        --grendel drago

  • "Rumored" return? I don't know about that. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XorNand (517466) on Monday May 30 2005, @11:44AM (#12677062)
    PHRACK FINAL (#63) scheduled for JULY 2005 (...rumors of a PHRACK RESURRECTION in 2007 can be neither confirmed nor denied...) Placing the "rumor" at the top of your website kinda officially acknowledges it, don't ya think? It's not like there's a massive drone of speculation buzzing about the 'net. ::rolls eyes::
    • It probably means it's not decided yet. If they go and say 'we might make one, we might not, depends how we feel', they will be swamped with emails. If they call it a rumour then it keeps up interest, and people assume it's a done deal and shutup, and they can decide later.

  • Url (Score:2)

    by repvik (96666)
    As a test of the generic slashdot population, you will even have to think a little bit to get to our website...
    (That, or we are too un-1337 to actually have a dns-entry that forwards to www)

  • too bad... (Score:2, Funny)

    by lonedroid (888148)
    they used a 6-bit counter :(

  • Check the cover of #62 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gowen (141411)
    Looking at the cover [phrack.org] of their previous issue [phrack.org]... is it any surprise that hackers have a reputation as being hairy palmed, sex-starved, sad sack porno hounds?

  • Gone....for the moment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Red Moose (31712) on Monday May 30 2005, @12:05PM (#12677166)
    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 .......
    • Two words: burn victims.

    • Re:Gone....for the moment (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zocalo (252965) on Monday May 30 2005, @01:12PM (#12677568) Homepage
      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?

    • They went to work at UUNet.
    • You're not kidding... I wonder what happened to Stan Cisneros (LOD kiddie from the 80's) who messed with COSMOS and RC-MAC one time too many, Jude Saucie [sp] of 8BBS, Bob West L.A. (aka Robert Lipman, concert pianist), Mike West Hollywood (aka Michael Williamson, pipe organ repairman), Mark Van Nuys (aka Mark Ross), Lenny DiCicco, Steve Pasadena (aka Steve Rhoades), and Roscoe (aka Lewis DePayne).

      If you know how to get hold of any of the above, please let me know!

  • People still read phrak? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jleq (766550) *
    I thought that the entire community of real hackers moved on to more intelligent, less "omfg 1337 lol" material, like 2600. For every interesting article in Phrak, there are 2 uninformative or just-plain-dumb articles.

  • why? phracking is considered terrorism nowadays (Score:4, Insightful)

    by t35t0r (751958) on Monday May 30 2005, @12:25PM (#12677281)
    With a list of possible submissions including:

    - hacking
    - phreaking
    - spying
    - carding
    - reverse engineering
    - anarchy
    - conspiracy

    could all get you labeled as a terrorist, charged by the DMCA, and in general land you in GITMO. The homeland security bill and other draconian laws are the reason why this will be the last Phreak ezine. This is because all the good hackers have gone underground (any of these themes remind you of Farenheit 451?).

    It's sad when the free exchange of information, ideas, and determining security exploits outside of anonymity could get you into lots of trouble.

  • Wow... af 4 months old dupe... (Score:4, Informative)

    by xtracto (837672) on Monday May 30 2005, @12:26PM (#12677295) Journal
    No news... I saw it [slashdot.org] already in that 0-day news site...

  • Acetylene Balloon Bomb (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ErichTheWebGuy (745925) on Monday May 30 2005, @12:30PM (#12677333) Homepage
    I've always gotten a kick out of this article in the first issue of PHRACK:

    http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=1&a=7 [phrack.org]

    In it, the poster spells out a recipe for an acetylene balloon bomb. Fill up a plastic bag with acetylene, put some rocks in it, put some of those little fun-spans in it, then throw it out the window... Always cracks me up when I think about some fucktard throwing fun-snaps into a bag filled with rocks and acetylene/oxygen...

    Maybe it's because of articles like this that PHRACK is dead.

  • Another Era Death (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pngwen (72492)
    It seems that all the fun stuff in the technology world is going away. The whole mentality of the industry has changed. I remember when computers were neat and fun, now they are just about as amusing as a toaster.

    Remember all the innovative games? Remember when new things came out? Remember when you spent hours in the basement trying to trick it all into doing things it wasn't supposed to?

    I do.

    But those days are long gone. I think it's because you can do too much with cheap hardware now. There is n

    • Re:Another Era Death (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mogwai7 (704419)
      Use microcontrolers! You can do a lot of stuff with them and are ultra cheap. Think of them as one of those old computers on a chip. :) Coding them in assembly and building circuits for them to interface to is a good challange. Microchip [microchip.com] gives free samples of their stuff and has excelent docs.

  • Put PHRACK in the schools (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zbik (194004) on Monday May 30 2005, @02:11PM (#12677915)
    It's easy to laugh at maladjusted PHRACK kiddies now, but it was partly thanks to its technical articles that I discovered my career path in the early 90's. I was at an age when many young males feel trapped by society and develop an undeniable desire to effect their will on the universe, often through such crude means as vandalism, setting fires, or blowing things up. Through a bundle of floppy disks full of PHRACK text files I became engrossed in learning the inner workings of the telephone infrastructure: trunks, LEC's and other mysteries behind the mundane.

    It was in this way that I came to an understaning that technology is not read-only; not simply a malevolent behemoth controlled by presidents and CEO's to manipulate a passive citizenry; but is in fact waiting to be created and tinkered with by such inquiring minds as my (former) self. Although my initial motives may have been anti-social I have since been able to contribute to society in a way that is, on balance, positive. I hope PHRACK continues to inspire others in the same way.

    That and Steven Levy's Hackers [gutenberg.org] probably saved me from a destiny as an ineffectual philosophy professor or some other brand of malcontent fat-assed intellectual.

    • "That and Steven Levy's Hackers [gutenberg.org] probably saved me from a destiny as an ineffectual philosophy professor or some other brand of malcontent fat-assed intellectual."

      Replace phrack with 2600 and you have the story of the last 2 years of my life :-)

      Hackers is such an important book. It and The Soul of a New Machine.
  • I honestly didn't know Phrack was still around. I'd like to say it's sad to see them going, but then again I haven't seen or heard anything relating to Phrack in 15 years.

    Phrack conjures up memories--now viewed through rose colored glasses--of a time when computing, as well as the culture surrounding computers, seemed far more interesting then it is today. Late at night watching text files stream across a black and green 80 column monitor, being pumped to my beloved Apple //e at 300 baud (When I finish school and get a job, someday I'll be able to afford a 1200 baud modem...I can't wait!!).

    I remember sitting at my desk spitting Dr. Pepper through my nose reading text files on BBS systems from the likes of "The Cult of the Dead Cow", or the seminal "How to Have Fun in K-Mart", or viewing works of the Phrack variety on hacking, cracking, and security with immense curiosity. It was great, because this computer I had was giving me a window into a world populated with people who, in many respects, were just like me.

    Then as the 80s turn to the 90s, I got my first shell account on the Internet, and traded love of BBS systems for IRC, Usenet and gopher. A few years later, hypertext markup hit, and com programs like Telemate, Procomm, or Qmodem quietly were replaced by Trumpet winsock.

    It didn't take long for the Internet to catch on, and a few years later IRC and discussion boards turned from being meeting points for curious, likeminded nerds to massive bland playgrounds seemingly populated by the same kind of people I initially used computers for to help get away from.

    Then again, maybe the olden days weren't really as great as I remember them.
  • ...but if I'm lucky I'll be able to make it into the last-ever loopback [phrack.org]!

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