Phrack #67 | Hacker News Reader

Phrack #67

phrack.com

98 pointsdeutronium14 comments

It's been years since I last read something from phrack, but I remember it being a huge inspiration to me back around their #50th issue. I was talking to a couple of guys during dinner a few days ago (one of them antirez, of Redis fame) and we noted about how serendipitous it was that all 3 of us had a background on compsec and reconnected many years later in a conference.

It's interesting to see that these things aren't dead and that people who care deeply about their craft (regardless of what craft that might be) actually succeed. I kinda wish today was a little more like the late 90s.

Now that we're in 2010, though, I kinda wish this stuff was instapaper-able (I'm curious about what these guys are publishing these days). I know we're talking about Phrack, but there's no real reason why this looks and feels like 1986. (as an aside: .tar.gz link is dead. Was going to make a pdf version of this to put on the ipad.)

Hello Fred :) Interesting that we both commented this actually, and the bottom line is, it is no longer 90s.

This is not bad per se. But in 90s you could say, it's no longer 80s with the cool times of BBS, but now there is security that is the new underground.

Now everything is still progressing in many ways, and even faster, but there is like the feeling there is no longer an "underground scene". I hope I'm wrong and that people in their 20s are experimenting what we experimented again.

Haha, hey Salvatore (serendipity! again!).

Security is not so much an underground scene because everything is super easy to share (this is a good thing) - everyone has access to much more information than we did back in the day.

That being said, I'm sure there's guys out there that are in "hunter-gatherer" mode like Melo talked about the other day. These people will hopefully be pushing the envelope in a few years time.

worry not. people in their teens and 20s are still experimenting -- it's just that the venues are different.

i love Phrack's old-time look-and-feel, but yeah, with a little work they could make it a lot more accessible.

The link is dead but you can manually download the TXT files from here :

http://phrack.com/archives/67/

Wow, ok. I thought "How to make it in prison" was going to be some ironic title on breaking out of a chroot prison or something. Nope, its actually about being in real-life prison. Some topics include whether to join a gang and how to gain respect once you get in.

Phrack is still writing the same things that you could find there 15 years ago, when it was great. Now it is not anymore I fear.

They are trying to distinguish themselves from (the dark period in phrack history) when whitehat faggots ran the show, with the same fuckers (the editors friends) getting published every single time. They are trying to get back to the underground feel of the glory days.

It's interesting to compare the treatment of Albert "soupnazi" Gonzales in phrack, http://phrack.com/issues.html?issue=67&id=3#article, vs. the treatment in the NYT article, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html?p... which was also linked here recently.

soupnazi, or segvec as some people here are more likely to remember him was a joke among the security community. the times magazine article that made him out to be the next mitnick took some real liberties with the truth. verini tried to paint the picture of a sociopath, but ultimately fell in love with him as well. don't be fooled by the times.

The saddest part about that article is the_ut / Stephen Watt getting a two year sentence for writing a _packet-sniffer_. Lets round up everyone who writes software that might somehow be used by criminals someday!

He should have just written a tcpdump filter. Oh, and he should have listen to _everyone_ telling him segvec was a fed.

Wow, this brings back memories.

I've been reading Phrack so long web browsers didn't exist. This makes me feel very old.

"Hacking the mind for fun and profit" is highly recommended... I haven't laughed that hard in months. Not with the author, unfortunately, but there you go.

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