Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

All Good Things Must End

Phrackstaff is pleased to bring you _our_ LAST EVER CALL FOR PAPERS for
the FINAL RELEASE of PHRACK.

Since 1985, PHRACK MAGAZINE has been providing the hacker community with
information on operating systems, network technologies and telephony, as
well as relaying features of interest for the international computer
underground. PHRACK MAGAZINE is made available to the public, as often as
possible, free of charge.

The final call for papers. Phrack mixed the technical, social and political with incredible disdain for their readers and wannabes. Phrack published Aleph One’s Smashing The Stack For Fun and Profit, which may be one of the most influential security papers written. Aleph didn’t invent stack smashing attacks, but he made them understandable. Phrack published Dorothy Denning’s Concerning Hackers Who Break into Computer Systems. Phrack taught you to hack phones (wired, cellular, or voice mail), networks (appleshare, Novell, MilNet, TCP/IP), operating systems (VMS or NT or IOS), radios, casinos, and your local McDonald’s.

Phrack got a lot of the very best writing that hackers produced. It was an important carrier and arbiter for the hacker orientation. But publication slowed from around once a month at one point, to maybe every six months as the world changed. I look forward to being slammed in l00pback for being silly and sentimental.