news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4657265.stm
Printable version Key hacker magazine faces closure By Mark Ward BBC News website technology correspondent Rotary dial phone, BBC Before the net most hackers were phreakers The in-house magazine of the digital underground, Phrack is closing after 20 years as its editorial team steps down. As much manifesto as hacking handbook, the magazine was hugely influentia l in the early days of hacker culture. It was very closely associated with legendary hacking groups such as the Legion of Doom that were the first serious explorers of cyberspace. As hackers moved from dial-up bulletin boards on to the net, the magazine kept its place as a knowledgeable, and often scurrilous, source of security information. For instance, issue 62 of Phrack contained articles about getting round W indows buffer overflow protections, advances in Windows shellcode, attac king Apache and hijacking wireless base stations. History lessons "Phrack is still really well known," said Ollie, current editor of the ma gazine. "There are a lot of security magazines but no hacking magazines. " Stan, a regular Phrack contributor, said the fact that it had survived fo r 20 years gave it a great deal of influence. "There are a lot of groups that put out their own magazines and they usua lly last about three issues," he said. Phone jack and plug, Eyewire We explore and you call us criminals. I a m a hacker, and this is my manifesto The Mentor, Phrack 7, phile 3 Ollie said that Phrack had evolved as hacking had changed and said that t he basic skill level hackers need to build up was rising all the time. "It's much harder to get to a point where you can actually do stuff," he said. The deadline for sending in articles for the last issue is 10 July. To commemorate Phrack's final appearance, issue 63 will be a hardback edi tion available at the Defcon and WhatTheHack2005 hacker conventions. The first issue of Phrack was published on 11 November 1985 and much of t he information it detailed was about phreaking - essentially hacking the phone system. This was because in 1985 the only place hackers talked to each other was via dial-up bulletin board systems. At that time the net was almost an e ntirely academic, governmental and military network. Legal challenge Phrack originated on a bulletin board known as Metal Shop but its issues were held by any board that wanted to consider itself part of the digita l underground. Phrack's main contributors, Taran King and Knight Lightning, boosted its popularity by writing profiles of well-known hackers, such as Erik Blood axe and The Mentor, and searching out articles that expanded people's kn owledge of how telephone and computer networks worked. Whether you know it or not, if you are a hacker, you are a revolutionary. Dr Crash, Phrack 6, phile 3 The magazine got caught up in the series of raids on hackers and hacker g roups that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Phrack editor Knight Lightning, aka Craig Neidorf, was arrested, charged with fraud and tried before a grand jury for reprinting most of a confid ential document, known as the E911 document, stolen from the Bell South telephone company. Bell South claimed that the confidential E911 documen t contained sensitive information and put its value at $80,000. The case became a cause celebre for the digital underground and Mr Neidor f's defence was organised by the fledgling Electronic Frontier Foundatio n The case against Mr Neidorf collapsed when it was shown that the E911 pap er could be ordered by phone from Bell South for only $13. Bruce Sterling, author and digital lifestyle guru who wrote about Phrack in his 1992 book The Hacker Crackdown, thought it unlikely that the maga zine would disappear for ever. "I'd be surprised to see the thing stay dead," he told the BBC News websi te, "They've got no fixed address and anonymous contributors." "Any set of unruly teenagers could start Phrack up because that's who sta rted it in the first place." Ollie from Phrack said that the team would be happy to hand it over to a new group that wanted to start it up again.
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