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Phrack Magazine
- lucidphreak 6y agoI saw mention of x.25 in the comments below.. Made me swoon... oh the memories.
- Bluestein 6y agoAh! A classic :)
- ArtWomb 6y agoWorth introducing to a new generation ;) If you want a representative article to sample, let it be Strauss' "The Fall of Hacking Groups". A lament for the subculture of yore: http://phrack.org/issues/69/6.html http://phrack.org/issues/69/6.html Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734737
- grep_name 6y agoNew generation here, where can I go to find people who still value the old hacker ethos? I'm not even that young (28), but never encountered these groups when I was younger and my preferences and values surrounding technology have always put me slightly out of step with my peer group
- turbografx16 6y agoI'm also a younger hacker and I have the same issue. I've found 0x00sec.org is alright, and security CTF forums can be decent, but there's an awful lot of people just looking for easy answers and aren't interested in learning or sharing knowledge.
- j4yav 6y agoI’m an older hacker, and it was kind of the same back then too. We called them script kiddies.
- _jal 6y agoScript kiddies will always be with us. It doesn't catch all of them, but a decent defense against the worst of that lot is a second forum that requires reading comprehension for access.
- Shared404 6y agoMay as well add myself into the list of younger people seeking a similar community. The closest I've found thus far is HN itself, which while obviously not security focused is at least interested in both learning and sharing.
- at-fates-hands 6y agoI'd start here: https://twitter.com/_mg_?lang=en https://twitter.com/_mg_?lang=en Guy does some insane hardware hacking. See who he follows and who's following him. Look at who he's working with. Find out where they hang out online. Like all things these days, you really have to do some research and dig to find the good stuff. MG is a great starting point. Hope it helps. . .
- profquail 6y agoThe 2600 Magazine community is still alive and well: https://www.2600.com/ https://www.2600.com/
- SeeManDo 6y agoLifetime subscriber here
- mtalantikite 6y agoI remember taking photos of phonebooths in Algeria on a trip to visit family as a teenager. They thought I was crazy.
- techrat 6y agoI had a bit of a hard time explaining to my partner why I wanted to install a payphone in the kitchen... (Did it anyway. https://i.imgur.com/P72hRtf.jpg https://i.imgur.com/P72hRtf.jpg )
- markus_zhang 6y agoThis looks fun! What do you do with it? I have no knowledge of phracking/hacking.
- techrat 6y agoRight now it's currently wired up to an ObiHai box and using it to connect to my GoogleVoice number. Accepts coins, makes the coin tones, can make and receive phone calls. Fully functioning. On the hunt for some old baby bell info cards. Would like to have Nynex showing through instead of Qwest.
- fortyseven 6y agoThey just pushed out the new Winter 2020 issue, too. (It's late.) Available in traditional newsstand meatspace, or as a PDF download. -> https://2600.com/content/winter-issue-2600-released-8 https://2600.com/content/winter-issue-2600-released-8
- Communitivity 6y agoHas this now been reclaimed by hackers? If so, that is great news. It used to be an amazing source of information, back when Tarod and Knight Lightning ran things. Then it slowly seemed to get taken over/become for the cyber-security professional crowd. The P.H.I.R.M. publications are great reading too. gatech.edu used to have an archive of all the old Phrack issues somewhere, and more, but I've no idea if it's still there.
- tptacek 6y agoA lot of those people from the KL days were security professionals.
- scienceman 6y agoI think there’s an implication difference between security professionals and cyber-security professionals.
- tptacek 6y agoWhen did that supposed shift happen? I lost track after Schiffman, but everyone up to that point was pretty much the same kind of people as the KL crew.
- segmondy 6y agoOnce the editor changed from an individual to "The Phrack Staff" it kinda lost it's charm. I also take it as a sign of the times tho, folks who needed to earn a living couldn't risk being strongly associated with the zine. Folks also began self publishing on their own sites/blog and bugtraq really became the place to publish your CVE... It was fun while it lasted. I'm sure the new & current gen have their own idea of the "in thing".
- tptacek 6y agoI can't think of any time since the mid-1990s where being affiliated with Phrack would have jeopardized a high-status career in software security.
- turbografx16 6y agoWhere are the hackers hanging out these days? 5 or so years ago /r/netsec was pretty good, and 0x00sec seems a decent (if small) community. I miss having a place to hang out with other people messing around with random security projects and CTFs...
- bynxbynx 6y agoI help run the OpenToAll CTF team - while the primary focus for most are CTFs, the community (>500) has really expanded, e.g., (in the slack workspace) we have active channels for N-day repros, bug bounties with internal competitions, financial trading shop talk, and hardware hacking. You wont find much OTR or blackhat stuff ( due to slack ToS), but Ive found the community loves learning and discussing all things sec. It doesnt hit your mark completely, but hopefully its somewhat helpful
- buzzert 6y ago> ( due to slack ToS) With restrictions like that, it surprises me that Slack appeals to hackers at all. Why not IRC?
- bynxbynx 6y agoOriginally we were on IRC. As the team grew, more CTFs were being played - often concurrently - so having dedicated (private) channels for a given CTF and "sub" channels for its challenges gave us a lot more flexibility. That being said, we've considered migrating to Discord, Zulip, or Matrix - just haven't gotten around to it yet.
- kemonocode 6y agoPlease consider using either Zulip or Matrix from the get-go, else if you just pick Discord you will find yourself in the very same situation as with Slack before long. I was in a little CTF server which got flagged and taken down, even though there wasn't anything too particularly nefarious going on. Maybe someone did upload something dumb which raised flags on Discord's end, though.
- vehemenz 6y agoAnyone have any ideas about making an 80-character-wide, plaintext-style website responsive? I really like the style, but it doesn't work well on phones.
- anotheryou 6y agoin CSS you can do "max-width: 40ch" on smaller devices if you want. For fancy decorations you'd need need to draw them with css and/or pseudo elements. pre{ max-width: 40ch !important; white-space: normal; }
- vehemenz 6y agoGood idea. I didn't know about ch units. I experimented with setting a fixed vw width, which kinda works, but at the end of the day 80 characters is probably just too much.
- anotheryou 6y agoOn desktop I force most text to be 60ch width max. Breaks a few sites but overall as great for HN comments for example. *:not(#tinymce) p{ max-width: 60ch !important; }
- giantrobot 6y agoSo long as you're actually using HTML (and not literal plain text) all you need to do is add a viewport meta tag: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> Mobile browsers set the viewport width to a default of 960px (Android might be a little different from iOS). That's why a plain text file displays so poorly on mobile. It's rendering to a pixel width larger than the display (and zoomed to fit). For the "plain text" look set the font family to monospace. Bam readable and responsive "plain text" look.
- _joel 6y agoA blast from the past! Reading those articles back in the day definitely piqued my interest computers and telephony.
- rootsudo 6y agoThe old zines, inspired me so much, I'm fortunate that I was able to get tons of blacklisted411, phrack and 2600 in my youth. :)
- bluetwo 6y agoThis just had me thinking about 2600. A bookstore on South Street in Philly used to carry it on their racks.
- greenie_beans 6y agoThey just released a new issue: http://store.2600.com/collections/2010-2015/products/new-issue-pdf-winter-2020-2021 http://store.2600.com/collections/2010-2015/products/new-iss...
- downtime-vam 6y agoI have a lifetime subscription to 2600. Still going strong!
- j4yav 6y agoThey still publish pay phone photos in the back, I’ve managed to get several in there over the years.
- goshx 6y agoFor those not familiar with it, Phrack was teaching how to exploit buffer overflows back in 1996 [1]. This is still relevant today and required for some certifications in cyber security like the OSCP. [1] http://phrack.org/issues/49/14.html http://phrack.org/issues/49/14.html
- goshx 6y agoAlso worth mentioning the Hacker’s Manifesto from 1986: http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html
- rtuin 6y agoSuch a classic. One of my favorite things ever written.
- xtracto 6y agoAlso notable that The Mentor (Loyd) actually participates (or used to participate) here in Hacker News. I had a brief starstuck moment when he commented here in another thread in the past. I was so identified by this in the early 1990s because I was very lonely in my small town in a developing country where nobody cared about computers and programming. As I got access to the internet I finally found a sense of belonging.
- goshx 6y agoThat’s my story as well, but late 90’s.
- spacemanmatt 6y agoImagine running across him in your social circle at 17 ;)
- hunter2_ 6y agoThat's awesome. Perhaps closer to the early 2000s for me (on Astalavista [sic] or some such), and I still get the feels when I read it. It really made what otherwise seemed like a strange/underground interest turn into a noble pursuit.
- freedomben 6y agoPhrack's article on buffer overflows on the stack was incredible back in the day. It taught me more about how computers work than any class in University. I referred back to it for years for understanding how programs actually run. Will always have a soft spot for that.
- smrq 6y ago"Smashing the stack" was required reading for the final lab project of a 300-level course at IU. As a TA for that class I saw it go right over lots of people's heads. When I took the class myself, I was the only one to finish the assignment (implement a basic buffer overflow attack over serial on some embedded system); the first time I taught that lab, only one person finished as well. Everyone who finished really got it, though. I'll always have fond memories of that article.
- Animats 6y ago"The Tao of Windows Buffer Overflow"? That was Cult of the Dead Cow, not Phrack.
- dagw 6y agoProbably thinking of "Smashing the stack for fun and profit"
- freedomben 6y agoYep that was it ^
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kleer001 6y agoWould someone more knowledgeable than me sketch out the relationship between Phrack and 2600? I think someone here knows it off the top of their head.
- amenghra 6y agoA classic, been around since 1985. https://github.com/deadbits/Zines https://github.com/deadbits/Zines used to be an archive of tons of similar ezines, the repo has been disabled ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Some of the zines it used to have include HITB, PhineasFisher, TeaMp0isoN, ZF0, anti-anti-sec, anti-sec, b4b0, dikline, el8, h0no, htp, owned and exposed, phrack, pocorgtfo, uninformed. On a more modern note, https://pagedout.institute/ https://pagedout.institute/ is great.
- DrPhish 6y ago40hex was one of my favourites back in the day, but it was focused purely on virii It was fascinating get an unvarnished look inside that world, complete with ethical/political discussion and of course source code with annotations!
- amenghra 6y agoLove that 40hex was "raw" with little editorial (aS wELL aS pOSTS wITH iNVERTED cASE). E.g. XOR is a matamatical function that can be used to cifer and decifer data with the same key. Some of the code comments are pure gold.
- tptacek 6y agoSome of the 40hex people turned into pretty hardcore vulnerability researchers (at least by 1990s standards).
- mhitza 6y agoIf you didn't read 29A I highly recommend it. It was even more technical, but I enjoyed it along with 40Hex.
- homarp 6y agohttps://files.awknode.com/zines/ https://files.awknode.com/zines/ seems to be a mirror
- dang 6y agoIf curious, past threads: Phrack Magazine (1985-2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18288767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18288767 - Oct 2018 (73 comments) Phrack 69 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11644340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11644340 - May 2016 (56 comments) Phrack Issue #68 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3841721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3841721 - April 2012 (50 comments) Phrack Magazine's classic article on OS/kernel development - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2583591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2583591 - May 2011 (3 comments) Phrack 66 (June 2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=744821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=744821 - Aug 2009 (9 comments) Phrack #66 is out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652545 - June 2009 (14 comments) Those are all about Phrack in general. I omitted threads about specific articles, except one because it's short and has a fun comment.
- Ansil849 6y agoSome more old-school H/P/V/A/C (man, I miss seeing that acronym pop up on sites, anyone else?) zines: http://textfiles.com/magazines/ http://textfiles.com/magazines/ And newer-school (90s-00s) zines: http://web.textfiles.com/ezines/ http://web.textfiles.com/ezines/
- cozzyd 6y agoI was hoping there'd be a new issue :(
- k1rcher 6y agoThis is incredible to read n many years later. I was a per-pubescent adolescent around the time of the publication of the "last great zines", and was only ever really exposed to a small subsection (HTP5, the MIT.edu and Linode incidents) through several mutual friends of mine who were, at the time, enthusiasts of and in the scene. That era and community was without a doubt the foundation for who I am today as a young adult, and who I strive to be in all aspects of life. I have and no doubt will continue to consume all of this content I may have missed out on since then. P.S. If I may call your attention to volume 0x0f, 0x45, part A of section 6 (Notes); wow. This, along with everything else, is enormously prophetic, profound, and intriguin: "--[ 6 - Notes A) In respect to social networks, while they are a valid community-building mechanism in nature, selfishness prevails in common usage, by means of the indulgent pleasure that fuels chronic "pluggedness", at times voyeur, at times exhibitionist and needy." - http://phrack.org/issues/69/6.html http://phrack.org/issues/69/6.html
- ryanlol 6y agoMoney killed hacker groups, I suppose the rise of cryptocurrency is to blame for dealing the final blow. Almost all of us involved in the creation of HTP5 were children, few of us cared about money. It didn’t seem attainable at the time anyway, just something fraudsters from third world countries dealt with. I think bitcoin changed this, now there’s a clear mechanism that enables anyone to profit from their crimes without having real life contacts or dealing with insecure services like liberty reserve. If I were to get root@Linode again I’d certainly have far more lucrative targets in mind than rival IRC networks. The great blackhats from groups like Ac1db1tch3z became billionaires by hacking bitcoin exchanges. It’s obvious why nobody is making zines anymore. The hackers claiming to not care about money were almost without exception children or just pretending to not care because they didn’t have the answer to “how?”.
- nachash 6y agoYou didn't have anything to contribute to HTP5, and you also didn't have root at Linode. My contention is that hacking groups were killed because of informants, such as the one we mentioned at the end of the Linode section. Thoughts?
- dagw 6y agoHats off to the old Phrack team. I can safely say that I probably wouldn't have this career I have now if it wasn't for Phrack.
- mtalantikite 6y agoSame, Phrack was mind expanding for my teenage self in the 90s. Is there anything similar floating around these days? So much on the Internet seems filtered through corporate platforms that are antithetical to the counter-cultural spirit. Or maybe I'm just old now!
- cyberpunk 6y agopocorgtfo is pretty good, but it's more aimed at 'weird machines' than just exploit techniques. You can also buy a copy online that comes looking like a bible, which I rather cherish as a possession ;)
- markus_zhang 6y agoThanks! Never knew about these magazines. Don't understand them at all but looks awesome.
- tekromancr 6y agoI own two editions of it and they are great! Just chok full of really, really wonderful stuff. Particularly the tomagatchi hacking articles! I feel a little uneasy reading them in public, though. The cover has, in big, bold beautiful letters "PoC || GTFO" which might lead someone who isn't familiar with the binary OR operator and the use of PoC as "Proof of Concept" to believe I hold opinions that I VERY much don't.
- cyberpunk 6y agoI don’t follow? I occasionally read mine in public — would you mind elaborating so I don’t fall into the same trap? What else could PoC mean?
- fny 6y agoDamn. I was really hoping there was a new article. I started reading these as wee lad back before I knew what a malloc was. Eventually I learned enough to get myself suspended. >:) Thankfully, I use my knowledge for good nowadays. Looking forward to the next issue whatever decade it may come. The paper feed does seem active though! http://phrack.org/papers/escaping_from_freebsd_bhyve.html http://phrack.org/papers/escaping_from_freebsd_bhyve.html
- weare138 6y agoDoes anyone know if the Phrack team is still active? There hasn't been a new issue since 2016.
- icedchai 6y agoI remember reading Phrack during the early 90's, x.25 hacking days. Anyone remember QSD or Lutzifer? I've long forgotten those NUAs now.
- justanother 6y ago0208057040540 is still in finger-memory
- tptacek 6y agoThis is a crazy read; I was there (though very young and not well connected) and, just try to get your head around a world in which the Internet was so new and unstable: http://phrack.org/issues/45/8.html http://phrack.org/issues/45/8.html Also: $300 for an X.25 hookup! I totally could have run an X.25 board!
- icedchai 6y agoThose were fun times, for sure. I got on the Internet fairly early (1991-ish), mostly through not-quite-legit means. Later on I got some jobs at early ISPs and helped a couple others get started. In those days, if you could configure a T1 and set up a couple static routes, you were considered a god.
- tptacek 6y agoI helped start a pretty successful ISP in Chicago (EnterAct) in --- I think? --- 1995, and it was bizarrely easy. By then, CLECs would deliver you a PRI (I think?) that would terminate calls from every suburb in Chicago, so you just needed a rack, an ethernet connection to an upstream, the PRI, and a couple of terminal servers to get started. We had a DS1, connecting our cage at MFS to our offices, but our actual upstream was just 10bT. For a long time, I routed the whole thing with proxy ARP. :)
- icedchai 6y agoPRIs arrived a bit later around here, and definitely changed the game. I think it was late 1996 when they started getting popular. Before that, it was stacks and stacks of modems! I remember going into one of the main POPs and there were metal shelves, over 150 modems (Microcoms, I think?), power strips 3 layers deep, individual serial cables to terminal servers, and a river of RJ11 phone cables coming out of the wall. All this was in an unconditioned basement in a small office park. All those blinking lights sure looked cool though. Our upstream was a couple T1's to two different providers. At some point, there was a billing dispute and one of the T1's got shut off. Everything was lagged for weeks. I forget the brand of terminal servers, but they booted off floppies, and stored their password file there, too (this was before RADIUS was deployed.) Crazy times.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- geenew 6y agoIf a link to Phrack is posted, then a link to POC||GTFO should be attached. A spiritual successor. https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/
- tjpnz 6y agoI remember reading these when I was growing up. I understood very little at the time but it filled my mind with wonder and was one of many things that nudged me towards studying CS.