@MayflyAlt-98's comment on 'THE OG HACKING EZINE DROPPED A NEW ISSUE. Phrack is back sisters :marseywereback: :marseydoomer: :marseyheart: :capy: Going since 1985! :marseyclockgenocide:'

https://phrack.org/issues/70/1.html

"Phrack! We're back! It was only five years ago that issue 0x45 was released. It may sound bad, but it is also, indeed, quite bad. Issue 0x45 was released four years after issue 0x44. And we are now five years after that. Just trying to set the context here. The world is so different and so many things have happened in these five years that it makes no sense trying to make any point. Phrack has always been a reflection of the hacking community, and guess what, the community is moving away from itself. By this we don't mean that there are no talented hackers, because there most definitely are (just take a look at our authors). We also don't mean that there is no exquisite public hacking, because there is (again, our articles as proof). However, there is a clear move away from the collective hacking mindset that was most prevalent in the past. The word "scene" brings only smirks to people's faces. There are many reasons for this, and we are all to blame [1]. So where is the community right now, and, most importantly, where is it going? We are all ego-driven, more so nowadays we would argue, and this has definitely made collectives much harder to thrive. We expect direct payback from our hacking, in many forms, including reputation. While it was quite common to receive anonymous papers, in the past five years we got almost none. Where is the new Malloc Maleficarum? Quality isn't the question here, we have high quality hacking, we covered that. The question is about the community and how it has changed in the last 10-15 years. And about Phrack. Phrack started as a community zine of exchanging technical information and hacking techniques in a time that it was hard to find it. It later changed. It became a symbol of achievement, eliteness, and honor to be published in Phrack. A slight but significant change happened afterwards. Phrack gravitated (willingly or not is the subject of another discussion) towards an academic medium. Academia noticed the high quality of Phrack papers, started citing them, and basing their offensive and defensive work on them. Did that alienate the underground that Phrack represented for so many years? Yes, we think it did. But the underground also changed. Some of it became involved in malware, spyware, and also the "infosec" industry. And this mutated the underground. Of course we don't judge. Shouldn't Phrack be the reflection of the community, whatever the community is? Or should Phrack be a beacon of the old school underground? Well, it remains to be seen. Phrack will always be alive as long as the community is alive, reflecting it. If the hacking community becomes "infosec" in its majority, then probably so will Phrack. If the heart of the community is CTF, Phrack will reflect that. If the community focuses on malware, so will Phrack. Isn't that what Phrack has always done? It always was and always will be "by the community, for the community". If the community has decided that Phrack has a five year release cycle, then that's where we are. Unfortunately, this issue is again an issue of eulogies; we have lost hackers that have had an enormous impact on our community. Phrack would like to say goodbye to them. Their loss saddens us deeply, and makes our community poorer in talent, ethics, and intellect. We also mourn lost communities. Segfault.net has been our home/hosting in the past and is now gone. But we also have some good news! You might have come across Phrack merchandise [2], well, yes, we have resurrected it! The original 2003 art work has been found on a backup drive. All profits go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is a rare example of good and simple advise for the ordinary citizens. Plus a defender of our rights online and of the freedom of information. A beacon of light to say the least. The EFF used to run one of the three FTP servers to download Phrack as well. And let's not forget that the EFF paid for the attorney of Phrack's co-founder Knight Lightning in the 1990 court case and supported him all the way. They defended against the US Secret Service, a ruthless adversary with no respect for the freedom of information or the hacking scene in general. With EFF's help the case against Knight Lighting collapsed and the US Secret Service looked like a pissed on poodle. The merchandise has the Phrack Gnome on the front and the Hacker's Manifesto on the back. And ships worldwide. [1] https://www.phrack.org/issues/69/6.html [2] https://phrack.myspreadshop.co.uk "