Phrack

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Phrack is an underground ezine made by and for hackers that has been around since November 17, 1985. The magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest. The articles of Phrack are related to security, hacking, phreaking, anarchism, cryptography, spying, radio broadcasting, coding, conspiracy, and world news.

The original editors of Phrack were hackers with the handles Taran King and Knight Lightning, and it was originally published on the Metal Shop BBS. It was the first electronically distributed magazine^{[citation needed]}.

Phrack is especially popular due to the general high standard of the releases compared to other underground zines, articles such as Aleph One's 'Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit' and The Mentor's 'Hacker Manifesto'. It also kept track of various well known hackers and hacker groups such as l0pht, The Phirm, and DoD.

The popular Hacker Manifesto, an inspiration to young hackers since the 1980s, was published in the 7th issue of Phrack. An article in the 24th issue relating to the workings of Enhanced 911 emergency response systems played a major part in the Secret Service raids called Operation Sundevil and featured in Bruce Sterling's book The Hacker Crackdown. Phrack also showed up in the two part Operation Moon Witch storyline, published in 1992's The Hacker Files by DC Comics, a story based on Operation Sundevil.

In 2005, it was announced that Phrack was to come to an end, with the 63rd issue as its last. To commemorate Phrack's final appearance, this issue was to be a hardback edition, released simultaneously at the DEF CON and What the Hack conventions on July 29. An e-zine version of the release followed on August 1. The European printer for the hardcopies of Phrack to be distributed at DEF CON refused to fulfill the order once they realized that they were printing a Hacking book. Two University of Arizona students filled the gap and printed 200 copies of Phrack in time for the convention.

However, the Phrack staff announced in their latest #63 release that the magazine will continue to run, with a new, younger generation of hackers leading it.

There are two different Phrack websites online at the moment: phrack.org houses the original, official magazine. A renegade site run by the Phrack High Council is located at phrack.ru.

The rebirth of the magazine is expected sometime in 2007. Quoting the introduction of the last Phrack issue: "As long as there is technology, there will be hackers. As long as there are hackers, there will be PHRACK magazine. We look forward to the next 20 years."