170: Phrack

Hey, it's Jack, host of the show. So,
the last two episodes talked about
hacking in the 80s and 90s, which was
primarily phone freaking. In those
episodes, I talked about a digital
magazine called Frack, which was
incredibly influential to the hacking
scene. It wasn't uncommon to be in a
chat room and someone come in and ask,
"How do I get started as a hacker?" And
then someone else simply say, "Go to
Frack's site, start reading it at issue
one, and by the time you're all caught
up, you'll be a great hacker."
It's probably good to go and listen to
the two episodes before this before
doing this one just to have the context,
but you don't have to if you'd rather
not. But the thing is is that in this
episode I interview two of the Frack
staff. The magazine just celebrated
their 40th anniversary. And I'm pretty
sure if you run a hacker magazine for 40
years, there's got to be some
interesting stories in there somewhere.
These are true stories from the dark
side of the internet.
I'm Jack Reider.
This is Darknet Diaries.
Okay. First, let's start out with some
introductions.
>> Hi, my name is Skyper. I used to be the
editor um of the Frack magazine in the
year 2000 to 2005
and um I've joined the Frack staff
recently again as an adviser.
>> Hey, I'm TMZ. I'm one of the current
staff and editors of Frack magazine.
>> In your words, can you tell us what is
Frack Magazine? So frack stands for
freaking and hacking and it's a
combination of these two words and it
used to be the manipulation of the phone
lines. Effectively the main goal was to
get you free phone calls that are very
hard to trace.
>> Frack magazine. This is all sorts of
things hacking related to be honest. Uh
I think there is the famous article on
how to make a bomb as well from the
past. Yeah, I mean that was I think I I
I saw that even in uh issue one. There
was a balloon that had acetylene in it
that you put like snap caps or pop caps
on it and throw some rocks together and
you throw the balloon off like a roof
and when it hits the ground the snap
pops the pops the little popper snap and
then it creates a little explosion. I
think that was issue issue one. And so,
um, it's it's interesting how anarchy
kind of shows up in in frack like like
bombs. What is this doing in a in a
hacker magazine?
>> I think we have to put this into um a
different context of of where we were um
40 years ago. Terrorism didn't really
happen, at least not in in most
countries. And so building bombs was not
seen as necessarily something evil or
criminal, but was, you know, just young
kids exploring things. What can they do?
They they didn't mean to do any harm
with them. They were just experimenting.
In my opinion, frack seems to capture
some kind of counterculture. It's notes
from the underground type stuff because
back in the '90s, cyber security wasn't
quite a mainstream profession yet. Like
schools didn't teach you how to secure
networks or how to hack. But nowadays,
almost every major university has a
major in cyber security. So back in the
90s, there was just this underground
group of people breaking computers
basically and talking about it in chat
rooms and on forums. You had freakers,
hackers, rippers, crackers, cedars,
which welcomed in artists and musicians
who were making things on their
computers. And this was collectively
known as the scene back then. And I
think it was this underground scene that
Frack was born out of and has its roots
in.
>> So the scene was made by like largely
people trying things out with their new
hardware that they found or like trying
to like make something do something that
was not supposed to be uh doing or that
was not engineered to do. So that's what
the original hacker was all about.
>> I think if you summarize it then frack
contains condensed hardcore technical
articles without any bullshit. the stuff
works and it's practical.
>> I'm fascinated by these two cultures,
the cyber security professional and the
scene hacker. One does it for money and
it's their career and one does it for
fun. It's their hobby, but they are both
passionate about it. One tries to do it
in the light, one wants to do it in the
shadows, but they both like sharing what
they know. What's the difference?
Honestly, attitude,
style.
But as computers grew more mainstream,
becoming more common in every house,
more interest grew in hacking. I mean,
I'm sure you've gotten some kind of new
electronic at some point in your life,
and you sat down and you said to
yourself, "What are all the cool things
that this thing can do?" So, imagine
getting a computer and learning that it
can print stuff and play games and make
sounds, but then also hearing about some
of the secret stuff it can do, like hack
other people's computers. So more people
got fascinated with hacking and were
contributing to things like frack
submitting articles on how to do cool
secret stuff on your computer. But also
along with the rise of computers, the
cyber security profession became popular
which sort of brought in a whole new
culture of hackers. These weren't the
rollerblading cargo pantswearing mohawk
kids. The cyber security professional
wears a collared shirt and sometimes a
tie. You can see the stark contrast of
these two cultures. When you go to
conferences like Black Hat and Defcon.
At Black Hat, you see people wearing
suits and ties. They say they're geeks
and nerds, but they don't look it. At
Defcon, there's a lot of people wearing
cargo shorts, black shirts, hoodies,
having mohawks. At Black Hat, I feel
like those people have to be there for
work. But at Defcon, I feel like those
people want to be there for the fun.
And because I grew up in the scene, my
heart is still there. We were the kids
who tried stuff with no manual or
tutorial. We built things that weren't
possible. We did it without permission
or rules. We pushed the boundaries and
explored a new frontier,
>> which also like a lot of those things,
they actually pave the ground for like a
lot of the the security industry exists
now. So a lot of people's job, they
exist because of some of the articles
that were written there, which is very
interesting. At this point, we're 40
years into Frack. And some of the
articles have historical significance.
>> Historical significance has the article
of the E911 documentation that was
released um in 1989, I believe. I think
it was issue 24. And um it was a
documentation that detailed how the
emergency um 911 system works in
America. And it was the first time that
um FRA gone into some some legal
problems with the with the authorities.
Uh I think that has some significance um
because it it happened right after
operation sundevil uh with the secret
service hunting hackers and it also
sparked the creation of the electronic
front because the the the frack person
who released that article was so
unfairly treated by the government and
by the corporates.
Yeah, I think that article solidified
Frack as the coolest hacker magazine
ever because the the the founder Night
Lightning or one of the early early
founders um got arrested for publishing
that article and then fought the law and
won. And so it's like I got arrested for
hacking and I and I beat it and I got
off scot-free. And that that was just
such a such a middle finger to the to
the establishment of like no we're we're
hackers and we can beat you and and we
did beat you in your core in your arena
in your court of law. We still won and
we didn't do anything wrong. Screw off
and leave us alone. And that that must
have been just like the most amazing
epic moment for for for the time to to
beat beat the law. and and I know there
was some other Frack contributors who
didn't weren't so successful um with
that E911 article. They plead guilty
before they could fight it. But the fact
that that happened and it and one of the
only times anyone ever has been arrested
for a CFAA violation and got off uh it's
only like I can count on my one hand I
think how many times that's happened and
frack was was one of them. So yeah, that
was definitely quite an article.
Yeah, Night Lightning um faces 60 years
in prison and $122,000
in fine.
>> That's a lot more money nowadays. I
think
>> another article which made big waves was
titled Smashing the Stack for Fun and
Profit.
>> So, Smash the Stack Fun and Profit issue
49 um was the first article that told to
the wider audience how buffer overflows
work.
So in the olden days, buffer overflows
were used to trigger computer a target
to execute a program that is not
intended to execute to break into
computer systems so to say. And this
article detailed it um how to do it
yourself, how you can do it. It was not
the first time it was used on the
internet. The first time was probably by
Robert T. Morris um who wrote the the
very first internet worm. And there were
other articles around how to manipulate
the the stack, but it was never that
detailed in that clarity and reaching
such a wide audience. When this article
came out, buffer overflows became the
new favorite way hackers would break a
system and it was a favorite because of
how successful it was to do. Programs
just weren't designed to stop this from
happening and so many things were
vulnerable. I think the race just
started with source code reviews and
finding vulnerabilities, disclosing
them, um, irresponsibly disclosing them
in the olden days and then slowly
getting an idea of what responsible
disclosure is, that not every corporate
is your enemy and trying to work
together with them, trying to find
common ground, how we can make the
internet a better place for everybody.
Yeah, this is one of those cases that
this was like a very elite and
underground technique known probably
just by governments or things like this
uh that when it hit the the when the
article was written it just like it
clicked in so many people's minds. So
there was like this myriad of software
that's like abundantly available and
like most likely vulnerable. They can
just fool around with it like
everywhere. So yeah. So just to put this
into perspective, when I started out
with computer security and hacking, uh
when I wanted to learn how to break a
computer system, I've been told what you
have to do is you have to go to the
library. You have to find the book about
Robert T. Morris. You have to find and
read the articles, the news articles to
piece together information how he did
it. And then when Frack came out with
Smashing Stack and Fun and Profit, it
was all clear immediately. Back then,
hackers weren't very respected.
Companies would try to ignore the
vulnerabilities that they were told
about, almost with the audacity of being
upset that somebody would buy their
software and then try to break it as if
hackers were the problems, like they
were just some punk kids trying to jab
their fingers in somebody's eye. I think
that has flipped and I always like to
compare it against the the early
companies who who did safety assessment
for for cars. Um the the car industry
tried to tried to sue them and outlaw
them and says what are you doing? You
can't show the people how how dangerous
is to drive without seat belt. Um but
they did and now everybody has learned
that it is right to have a seat belt.
It's good to have a seat belt and the
same thing happened with their with with
this article and then with the exploit
development. In the beginning they were
hesitant. They were blaming the hackers
for releasing such destructive
technology. But if the hackers hadn't
released it, then them other governments
surely would have exploited these holes
anyway.
>> True. Now they don't they don't do this
only for the fun. They do this mainly
for the profit. And it 100% became a
business uh and a career. People are
hired now to hack companies to you know
assess their security. Like uh you see
this every day. There's a lot of
episodes that you covered already that
about like this like you know companies
that they hire people to do like
penetration testing and their physical
security and all those things. This was
unthinkable back then. I think
>> there are so many good articles on
frack.
>> I think the um you know the end map one
the port scanning the art of port
scanning from issue 51 by fodor uh which
followed the release of the uh end map
tool.
>> N MAPAP was the the grandfather of all
port scanners out there.
>> Oh wow. Yeah. N MAPAP is the de facto
tool almost the standard for how we do
port scanning today. It's a super simple
command line tool and the person who
made end mapap published how to
effectively port scan using the tool on
frack and that taught millions of people
how to port scan even today end mapap is
still highly used by just about everyone
in cyber security and there's another
article in frack which goes into detail
of how to do GPS jamming
>> I like that this article is in there
because it shows that GPS jamming is not
really cyber security But it is GPS in
itself is a technology that everybody
uses and that nobody ever really thought
about how vulnerable it is. And because
it is already a weak a very weak signal
coming from the satellites.
Of course you can jam it. But it was not
apparent to everybody until we released
the article and then you could buy
jammers, you know, two years later you
could jammers all over the place from
China and whatnot for very low money.
But it was was Frank first who released
that article and got this idea out there
that hey GPS is actually very easy to
jam. No one ever thought about that.
>> H that's a good point. I don't always
know where the line is on whether
something is a cyber security problem or
not. I published an episode recently
about a credit card skimmer and a lot of
you complained and said that episode had
nothing to do with cyber security and it
made me wonder okay well if it's not a
cyber security problem whose problem is
it? I mean, if you've got articles on
Frack Hacker magazine that shows you how
to exploit a technology and compromise
the integrity of it, then maybe that is
a cyber security problem. And of course
we had the hackers manifesto article as
far from from 1986 that was like a
>> for me this is the most significant
article in in all of just because it it
sets out the the baseline and the
conduct how hackers should behave and
what hackers
>> should do and should not do and how we
think.
>> Oh yeah, I told you about the hacker
manifesto in one of the previous
episodes. One of the Legion of Doom
members wrote it and published it first
on Frack. And I'll give you a short
excerpt from it. I'm reading from Frack
here. This is our world now. The world
of the Electron and the Switch, the
beauty of the Baud. We explore and you
call us criminals. We seek after
knowledge and you call us criminals. We
exist without skin color, without
nationality, without religious bias and
you call us criminals. You build atomic
bombs. You wage wars. You murder. You
cheat and lie to us and try to make us
believe it's for our own good. Yet we're
the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My
crime is out of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say
and think, not what they look like. I am
a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You
may stop this individual, but you cannot
stop us all. After all, we're all alike.
>> Yeah, these things are are still valid
today. Maybe perhaps even more valid
today than they were back then. that we
all equal, that we don't care about skin
color, religion, our nationality.
And you know, a lot of a lot of
criminals forget this. And that's why
they are criminals. They are not
hackers. If you hack for a nation,
you're not a hacker. You're actually
more concerned about your nationality
than about the hacker manifesto where we
don't care about that. We only care
about skills. >> Correct.
>> Yeah. I wrote a little bit about it um
in the last Frack, Frack 72. We're going
to take a quick ad break here, but stay
with us because when we get back, we're
going to get into my favorite frack
stories.
The first issue of Frack was published
in 1985 before websites were popular.
So, it was just hosted on a BBS and you
had to like use your home phone and dial
into it and read it that way. And they
wanted the articles to spread. So, they
encouraged people to mirror it on other
people's BBS's and other towns. But
eventually, when websites became
popular, frack moved tofrack.com.
and that became its new home. But it
didn't stay that way.
>> I think frack.com got hacked at least
once. Uh the web server was often down,
not reachable.
>> Somewhere around 1998, frack.com went
offline. It stopped publishing articles
for 2 years and was down most of the
time. I should also mention that Frack
changed owners quite a bit. The original
founders went off and did something
else. New people came in and they were
doing stuff, but it's a free magazine
and they never tried to make money. So,
it relied on volunteers to keep it going
and they could only spend so many years
of their life before going off and doing
something else. By 2000, the site looked
dead. The website had been mostly
offline for the past few years and no
new articles for 2 years. And at that
point, it was ran by Mike Schiffman, aka
Route. Skyper wasn't involved at all.
And Mike didn't even know who Skyper
was. But Skyper had a plan. He wanted to
revive Frack and needed to do something
epic to prove his worthiness. And so I
decided to to steal a domain which was
frack.org, which back then was not owned
by the Frack staff. It was owned by
somebody who probably didn't even know
about Frack.
>> What how did you steal a domain?
Well, luckily in in the olden days,
these things were rather easy. Uh, you
would go to the domain register, in this
example was a French one, gandi.net, and
you would initiate a domain transfer,
and it would ask you that you need the
authorization code to transfer it. And
you would right click on the web page
and say few source code of the web page
and the authorization code would be
written there in a hidden HTML tag, in a
form tag. And that was all you needed
back then to to do hacking.
>> Wow. So just by looking at the view
source of a website, it would show you
the authorization code that it was
expecting in order to prove that you're
the owner of the site. I mean, it has to
compare the authorization code you type
in with something, right? So there's
some logic on the back end somewhere. It
just happened to be right there in the
source code of the site. It was as
simple as just doing view source and
then you could take over anyone's
domain. But you also have to put this
into perspective. Back then, not many
browsers had a feature to actually view
the source code.
>> So, Skyper had frack.org and wanted to
use it to revive frack.com.
But he wasn't doing this alone. He
actually was involved with a few hacking
groups, specifically hurt and tesso.
>> So, Hurt is stands for the hackers
emergency response team. And Hurt was
founded around the same time when the
searchs were founded, the computer
emergency response team. And it was
meant to be a counterweight to the um C
um because the community felt that often
their the S the computer emergency
response team didn't really know what
they were doing and the publications
were
often not technically correct. And so
the community created the hackers
emergency response team where the
hackers published their version of the
vulnerability and their exploits and
their assessment of the risk and um yeah
that was was how it was and Tessle was
um a German/Austrian
um hacker group who later became more
internationally
um and went by the name of team Tesso.
>> So with frack.org Oregon hand and with
Tesso and Hurt behind him, Skyper got
busy recreating the site to show he can
manage a website like that.
>> And then I I spent many days and many
nights to recreate all the articles. I
put them in an SQL database so it was
searchable and copied all the data and
created the web page and um then put it
online and then called Mike Schiffman
who was the editor-in chief back then. I
caught him during breakfast. He's he was
literally saying, "I'm just having
breakfast, but what you're saying sounds
great, so let's do it." Uh there was no
hesitation. And it was a combination of
people from Tesso and Herd um who took
over the Frack magazine in 2000 or
revived the Frack magazine in the year
2000. So Skyper was now in control of
Frack and it officially moved from
frack.com to frack.org, which is where
it remains today. And it was a whole new
fresh team. Nobody from the old frack
staff was around to write any articles
or to help. So this new team got busy
with a fresh new issue, issue 57.
>> Yeah. Well, first one already was the
first hardcover release ever. So we
decided we want to land with a big bang
and decided for our very first release.
Not just are we going to write all the
artics ourselves, we also create the
first hard coverver release which we
release at a at a hack conference, a
physical copy. So in 2001 was the first
time Frack had a hard copy created,
elevating it to the next level.
>> It was fantastic. It was a fantastic
success. We I think we printed 800 hard
copies or so. Uh we all picked them up
with with a car with a rented car and
these hard copies were heavy. We to
picked them up in a printer in
Netherland and the car almost crashed
with all the with all the load in in the
trunk on the back seats. Uh we drove to
the conference and uh went to the main
tent and announced that we are I'm going
to distribute frack in half an hour and
we had a great party and handed out the
magazines and lots of alcohol and
celebrating and talking about it. It was
a fantastic time.
>> So hackers trying to hack a hacker
website is always going to be a thing
and frack.org Borg had its fair share of
attacks and uh there was a group that
particularly was trying to take down
frack and they called themselves the
frack high council or PHC.
>> Yeah. Around that time there was a
movement called the anti-security
movement
and it was around the time when um
hacking really got commercialized and
many many many companies entered the
community and started to sell cyber
security technology and um hackers would
start working for these companies and
they would they would sell the secrets
that they did not research and did not
discover but that were given to them by
the community and they were making lots
of money from it and the community was
not very happy about that because
effectively these people stole from the
community
and so a movement emerged called the
anti-security movement
and uh which basically said well that's
that's not okay we can't do that and out
of that the PHC materialized and they
were probably let's call them the their
the radical form of anti-security
movement they would do witch hunt and
they would try to hunt down every hacker
who would work for corporate. I call it
hacker cannibalism where hackers ate
other hackers and destroyed other
hackers often unfairly and unjustified.
It was really a witch hunt. Um and that
went on for some time and PhD then tried
to take over frack because they're not
happy with the editorial staff that who
was running frack. Of course, they tried
to hack into the servers and things that
you would do, but they also tried to to
to steal articles or send out cold for
papers and pretending that they were
frack, but they never never owned the
domain. Oh, how interesting. They tried
to pretend to be frack by publishing
lookalike articles that pretended to
expose secrets, but they weren't
actually secrets. A little war was
breaking out between the corporate cyber
security culture and the underground
hacker culture. The Frack High Council
thought if Frack publishes articles on
how to hack that it'll be used by
corporations to make money. So
therefore, don't publish any articles at
all or publish articles that would be
detrimental to the cyber security
professionals out there who are trying
to profit from it.
>> Yeah, they wanted to keep all the
secrets among themselves and so that
only um they can use them. Um it's very
selfish. Um and it's also
counterproductive in a in a in an
intellectual society. You need to share
your ideas um to inspire other people
and for other people also to verify your
ideas and to take your ideas further to
the next step. Otherwise, it's a
stagnation and you won't go anywhere.
>> Okay, so they they tried to publish an
article as frack just posing as them.
What else? they actually stole some of
the pre-release of frack and um so what
happened is that and uh the frack staff
always releases the upcoming frack
release to the community to some trusted
friends and um then after it's released
to trusted friends then it's released to
some lesser trusted friends and so on
and so on and after a few days it ended
up before the official web page release
in the hands of a PHC guy so this PHC
guy knows that we haven't released it
publicly yet, that it's still a
community release only. And he modifies
the Frack articles, put some back doors
in there, and then publish on his web
page, the PHC web page, as a new frack
release. And these back doors, they were
not even clever back doors. They were
just very destructive back doors. It
would delete your entire computer.
>> Wow. So, have you ever looked up a
tutorial online and it had some some
script or code or something and that's
what you needed to do? That's the
command you were looking for. And so you
just copy and paste it into your
computer, but you don't actually know
what it does. Yeah. Well, if you would
have tried to copy and paste this
script, it had the command rm-rf,
which would delete your whole hard
drive. How funny is that? Obviously,
Frack Staff didn't put that destructive
command in their magazine, but that
version of the article still existed out
there somewhere. Skyper and his team had
brought Frack back. They were publishing
yearly issues of Frack. But then Skyper
moved on to do other things. But there
was enough momentum and there was enough
people involved with Frack at that point
for it to keep going on its own. But it
was slow going. Yearly issues turned
into every other year issues and then
sometimes there'd be four years between
issues.
And in 2016, it seemed like that was the
last issue of Frack. Frack staff just
wasn't there anymore. And there were no
issues coming out. But 5 years after
that in 2021, to all our surprise, a new
issue of Frack was released, we thought
it was dead. But we were super happy to
see a new issue. And I remember hearing
people at Defcon tell me that year that
they used an exploit that they saw in
that new issue of Frack to make a bunch
of money on bug bounties that year. So
it still had teeth and grit and was
hard-hitting. Well, at least until
things got patched. But that seemed to
be the last harrah for Frack. The
internal Frack staff just sort of
fizzled out. there wasn't support much
for it. The people were just very
loosely involved at that point and they
decided to get together in 2023 to
discuss the future of frack
>> and we actually met in Spain to to
discuss a bit the future about uh frack
and we decided that's not just for for
two or three people to decide that we
should really ask Mike Schiffman again
and some of the old staffers and
previous staffers what their opinion is.
And then eventually we had a big phone
call with um maybe six or eight people
of the old stuff and new stuff on there
and we discussed what we should do and
there were various options. Some people
said, "Hey, let's do one more frack and
let's just call it. That's it." You
know, the last frag. And then other
people said, "No, we can't even do that.
The community is dead." And most
importantly, there were the very few of
us who said, "No, no, the community is
always there. There is still a community
that deserves a magazine like this.
There's always curiosity out there and
always the need for for people to to
publish articles and we have to provide
a platform for them so they can do it.
and Frack is the perfect platform for
for these articles. Uh so we were
brainstorming about um who we could
contact out there who who has experience
with running a magazine um who who would
enjoy running magazine and who is also
technically skilled because you know
Frack in the end is a is a very
technical magazine. So the the group
that came to our minds were the people
who were running already Tempout
magazine.
>> Temp out is very similar to Frack. It's
an eene which posts articles on hacking.
It has its own edgginess to it like
there's a bunch of asy art and
hard-hitting articles and it was TMZ
here who co-ounded Tempout.
>> So Temp is a group that uh is a research
group that we formed maybe 5 years ago
now. Uh we started as I three people we
just wanted to like uh research uh ELF
infection techniques or Linux viruses
and things like this. We thought it was
like a very niche area that we had like
a people in common that wanted to do
that and so we kind of you know
brainstormed a little bit and then more
people were joining and then eventually
we had like a discord channel there's
like 1,500 people there now and uh
suddenly you know the community was like
okay what if we make like a zen you know
like in the old days uh people like oh
yeah I wanted to write the script or
whatever so we just give it a go like
and we made four uh volumes already of
it uh so far and it's been like really
really nice
>> and we contacted them and um we went had
a phone call together and the rest is
history.
>> I was honestly like speechless when that
happened. Like I was very very anxious.
I remember that I was on vacation and I
just ran to the uh I was actually to
about to catch a flight. So, I just like
found like a the quietest corner of the
airport lounge that I could find and had
the call with them and took notes of
everything. Uh, essentially like the
idea was like, "Okay, uh, if you wanted
to to give it a go, you know, trust you
with that." The former staff also was
saying like, "Okay, we we maybe should,
you know, do something different this
time, like, uh, make Frock like well
known again."
The Tempout team had already established
themselves as a group who was technical,
smart, and could ship articles and
immediately got busy reviving Frack.
Once again, I had no idea that the teams
behind Frack have shifted so much
throughout the 40 years. But when is
volunteer-driven, I suppose that's what
happens. So, the Temp Out team was
excited to be taking over Frack and
wanted to make their first issue a big
one. It was 2023 and in the 7 years
before that, there had only been one
Frack issue released. So, a lot of
people just thought it was dead, but to
show them that it wasn't dead. They
wanted to make a physical copy and
release it at Defcon.
>> Yeah. Uh we just thought actually about
doing only an online release. Uh we we
didn't really thought about actually
doing a physical release last year uh
until kind of late uh in the process.
And then we were just like, okay, what
if we do it? you know, can we do it? Do
we have like some budget? Can we like
talk to some people? So, we're able to
raise some funds. Uh, and we were able
to get like 500 copies down to uh to
Vegas. Yeah. Was the first very
interesting for us to experience some
logistics because, you know, releasing a
physical copy of things, it's it's not
as easy as it sounds like not only like
you have to actually make the material
uh but, you know, the distribution,
especially at FCON.
>> Wow. Okay. So, last year you actually
reached out to me to uh you were looking
for a place to to spread them or give
them out.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we had
a few of them uh downstairs, right? And
then we're just like, "Yeah, sure." But
we kind of wanted like a place more
centralized for that. And that uh it was
very nice to to get some of the copies
there at the party at the Dark in the
Darkness party. People really liked it.
And I remember like a lot of people were
so happy and uh I think that's what made
uh me feel like very realized. That's
why I was like a lot of people they
looked at it and they looked at it as
the most precious thing that I ever
touched like you know they they say yeah
I I'm here and I like what I do now
because of frock like 25 years ago 30
years ago. So you know that that's
that's really like a very very nice to
>> it. It's a special moment for me. I
mean, the fact that the Frack staff came
in and started handing out frack
magazines at my party was I felt like,
man, I I this is this is special. This
is cool. I didn't I I I'm feel honored
to have been one of the places to uh to
spread it because I think you only you
pick like three or four places to spread
out the magazines there.
>> Yeah, correct.
>> And uh
>> yeah, thank you for having us. It was
really
>> I I cherish my copy that I got from you.
I wish I got it signed. As soon as I
left that night, I was like, "Oh no, how
did I not get it signed by you?" But um
yeah, that's that feels like a very
special um book to to own. It's it's
more of a book. It's in my hand here.
And my gosh, this thing is heavy. So,
Frack 71. Um I'm just looking through
it. It's very text. There's hardly any
pictures at all. And I guess that's
because you were saying,
>> you know, we weren't even thinking about
printing it. And then when you finally
got around to printing it, it's like,
okay, well, we'll just print the
articles.
>> Yeah. So editing this is already hard,
you know, for somebody that doesn't have
like, you know, that doesn't work with
it, I guess.
>> Um, but we also like, okay, we keep the
style, right? Like that's what the first
thought like also. So it's easier
because it's, you know, less editing,
but also like which is already pretty
hard, but you know, we keep the the text
plain text style, which a lot of people
relate to and really really like.
>> So Tempo proved themselves to be able to
ship and issue a frack. Great. But Frack
started in 1985. So with 2025 coming, it
would mark the 40th anniversary of
Frack, which got a lot of people excited
to pitch in and help make a great new
issue. If Frack 72, because it's marked
our 40th anniversary, we we all wanted
to to make something very special. So we
the initial idea was to go back to the
Netherland to release the magazine there
again as a hard copy where we released
the first hard copy 24 years before. Um
but we got enough funding and we got
enough community support to then be able
to coordinate um a release at three
different conferences at the same time
which was in Netherland and at Defcon in
Las Vegas and at Hope in in New York
City and then very smaller conferences
all around the world. Uh so that was
that was beautiful how the community
came together and everybody chipped in
some dollars and helped us. The one that
I have actually has a Defcon special
edition written on the cover. So, were
there multiple covers?
>> Yes, we have three different covers.
Actually, four. Uh, one of them is is
going to be released later this year.
>> I'd like to add something there. When
TMZ says, um, there are four covers. um
three that are already released and one
of them that will be released at the end
of the year, it's because we're going to
release the PDF online for everybody to
to print it at home or print it on a on
a professional print shop and get it
shipped to their home address.
>> So, Frack issue 72 was released at
Defcon in 2025, and I was there to get a
copy of it.
>> Yeah. This year, we turned it up a
notch. This year, we didn't show up with
500 copies. turned up with close to
8,000 copies at Defcon.
>> Most, if not all, articles of Frack are
simply text files. There are no visuals
or graphics at all. Well, I should say
you can see some ASI art there, but
that's just still text in the shape of a
picture. But this 40th anniversary
edition, man, does it pop. Every page
has a graphic on it, and it's really
cool. It feels like a highquality
magazine at this point, and it's bulky
and has a ton of articles in it.
>> Yeah. So uh we got the opportunity uh to
have the wonderful people at page from
page out which is another magazine as
well uh to do the graphics for us. I
mean as you can as you know because you
saw it already it just it's mindblowing.
the quality is so so good. And I
remember when I got the confirmation
that they would do it, I was so relieved
that I didn't have to do it myself
because one, I mean, I know it's hard
for me because I'm not an expert on
this. And second, like I would never be
able to match this quality or nobody at
least that it's in the current staff.
And they just like it's just incredible.
And I think like Fra never looked that
good. >> Yeah.
It looks great. Yeah, you've uh it feels
like you're um coming coming of age, but
even 40 years later and it's like
looking great. Uh I like that. That that
makes me excited about the future. Um
getting it getting you said 8,000 copies
to Defcon.
>> Yeah, we had I think around 15,000
copies spread amongst those three
conferences.
>> Yeah. I mean uh gosh, how how much does
that even weigh? How do you even get
that to DevCon?
That's part of the problem as well. Um
first uh to solve these issues, we tried
to find like local printers, right? And
uh it is it is very very challenging uh
because the transportation is very
costly.
>> So we we found a Vegas printer and I
think the for Defcon that was 10 tons or
something.
>> 10 tons of paper.
>> Wow. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So the logistical issue is is that
you don't only have to deliver it by
truck to Defcon, you also need manpower
on the ground to
>> hand carry 10 tons from the loading bay
to the registration desk. So all these
little details we had to learn and
figure out. It was great to see Frack
all over the place at Defcon this year.
People were showing me how excited they
were when they got their copy. Some got
it signed by the frack staff. Some had
me sign it for some reason. It was a
wonderful time. But what surprised me is
that this is such a high quality
magazine. But then thousands of them
were given out to everyone just for
free.
>> Frack is for the community always. It's
always free. So uh somebody tries to
sell you a frock, you know that it's not
from us.
>> You you say you're never going to charge
for these things.
>> We're never going to charge.
>> No. No. It's so cool having
>> people are welcome to help us in any way
right the community is there for this
people can help us with like article
reviews with uh uh art as well and they
people did which is very very nice to
see like this year's uh there's a lot of
people involved uh you know the artist
that draw the covers for example as well
so there's several ways that people can
help us make this happen and and we do
it for them and they do it for for the
community as
Well, it's uh impressive that you're
able to make it happen and and have such
a high quality print uh print magazine
here. I mean, this what this thing is
like 100 pages long.
>> It needs to be said that of course these
thing cost money to print. The printer
still wants to be paid. He doesn't do a
favor for frack. And so the the defcon
print in its own was about um $55,000.
So this is still money that we had to
raise from the community. But good thing
is that many of our friends who who were
doing frack with us in the year 2000 and
2001 and who are reading frack with us
and who are writing articles for us. Now
24 years later they have all made their
fortunes. They're running big companies.
Some of them are traded on the stock
exchange. So these people came back to
us and they were happy to support us
financially and and help us with this
immense cost.
>> The magazine that launched 10,000 cyber
security careers, huh?
>> Exactly.
>> Well, so that's where we're at today.
40th anniversary. Well, congrats on the
on a 40 years of running a running a
thing or keeping it going. And it's so
fascinating that it's communitydriven
almost like Dread Pirate Roberts, right?
He he's his name lives on, but it's not
always the same person that lives on,
right? And so Frack continues to live on
because the community keeps it going
>> and the community is as strong as ever
now. Uh and I think we it's going to
grow even further.
>> Yeah. Tell us about the future.
>> Yeah. So I think we really want to keep
the community uh growing. Uh we want to
get a little bit better. So every time
we do a release, we learn a lot about
everything, right? logistics and article
reviewings and you know project
management and all those things. Um so
we're not expressed on nothing on this.
We also like have you know our day jobs
and all those things. Um so we're
learning as we go as well and uh the
community I think uh we want to grow and
have like more people involved to help
us. uh we have a lot of people that
sometimes they say yeah I don't have
time to to write an article this year or
something like this but you know they do
have spare time to like help with the
article reviews. So for example this is
already like a very very good job. Um I
think in the future we want to get more
people involved like if you want to to
say like in a very brief way uh we want
like to be accessible.
>> Okay. So I got a physical copy but
that's just cuz I happen to be at the
right time and right place. Is there a
way to get a physical copy by ordering
it? Yes. Uh like last year we made it
available for self print at cost
obviously so we don't profit. Uh and of
course you can print anywhere you want.
We have like just a recommended printer
whatever it doesn't really matter uh
because we released the the full high
quality PDF as well. So you can print
and edit if you want at your own local
print shop. And this year is going to be
the same.
>> Brack is currently looking for new
articles for their upcoming issue. If
you've got a new hacking technique or
thinking of researching a specific
technology or protocol, reach out to the
Frack staff with your draft or even just
an idea. They are very helpful at giving
you feedback to help you draft a great
article. Even if your English is not
very good, they can help co-author the
article with you. And of course, you can
still read every issue of Frack free of
charge at frack.org. Here's to another
40 years of an awesome hacker magazine.
A big thank you to Skyper and TMZ for
coming on the show and sharing the
history and stories of Frack. It really
is looking better than ever, and I can't
wait to see what they make next. In the
show notes, you'll find links to where
you can order a physical copy of issue
72, or just download the PDF and print
it at home. The show is made by me, the
packet tickler, Jack Recider. Editing by
the control alt delight Tristan Ledger.
Mixing by proximity sound. And our theme
music is by the mysterious brake master
cylinder. I named my dog Rejax because
nobody understands him. Not even me.
This is Darknet Diaries.