The 1991 cover format continued the previous year's style.

The page length remained at 48 pages with the page numbering scheme also remaining as it was in previous years.

The table of contents titles on the back cover had the following unique titles:

• Spring:  innards
• Summer:  open for business
• Autumn:  what it is
• Winter:  components

The dashed surrounding line around the article titles was replaced with three solid ones.

Second class postage permit info was printed on the back covers of all issues this year.

All of this year's covers were drawn by Holly Kaufman Spruch.  The mini-covers in the upper-right would also continue throughout the year.

The covers themselves focused on a combination of world events and various things that were happening in the hacker world.

Inside

The staff section had credits for Editor-In-Chief, Artwork, Writers, Remote Observations, and Shout Outs.

Remote Observations was replaced with Technical Expertise for Winter.

The staffbox appeared on page 3 for all issues except Autumn, where it was moved to page 4 to make room for the annual Statement of Ownership as required by the post office.

The Writer list ended with "all the young dudes" for Spring, "the nameless masses" for Summer, "those who are elsewhere" for Autumn, and "those who don't fit" for Winter.

Our laser printer "Franklin" would continue to get a shout out in each issue.

Our very first staffbox quote appeared in the Autumn 1991 issue: "They are satisfying their own appetite to know something that is not theirs to know" and was credited to Assistant District Attorney Don Ingraham (California) who came up with that gem during a television interview concerning hackers.  That same quote would also appear in the Winter 1991-92 issue, as it epitomized the attitude that we were constantly working against.

If you look very carefully in the Summer issue, at the bottom of the staffbox you'll see the words "AND HERE" which is a continuation of the theme of the Summer cover where someone is one step ahead of the authorities and leaving taunting messages all over town.  (It's entirely possible there are more of these hidden inside that issue.)

In the Winter staffbox, there was another tiny message at the bottom of the staffbox which read "53124."  This was a major corporation's default Simplex combination, which we printed just for fun.

Mailing info continued to be printed on page 3 as required by the post office.  A line for individual back issue availability (for 1988 on) was added starting in the Winter issue.

We made an exception to our no-advertising policy (other than house ads and the Marketplace for subscribers) to run an advertisement in the Winter issue for our Dutch hacker friends over at Hack-Tic who had created a Demon-Dialer Kit, known as the "ultimate phone phreaking box."

The Spring issue saw a price increase for domestic subscribers (now $21 a year).  Back issue prices, newsstand rates, and overseas subscriptions were unaffected.

We devoted some space to the case of Len Rose, as seen through the eyes of Craig Neidorf, who had been vindicated the year before in the Phrack case.  (By the end of the year, Neidorf would be issuing an appeal for help paying the $108,000 debt that legal charade had cost him.)  Rose, on the other hand, was facing imprisonment and harassment on trumped up charges in a case that was clearly not about illegal intrusion.  In the end, it was all about "how much justice can a defendant afford."

In the case of large companies, they were able to afford quite a bit, as stories exposed violations of privacy and anonymity by credit agencies.  There was also the memorable Prodigy story and its infamous STAGE.DAT file that appeared to contain private info from its users.  We debated whether this was something nefarious or simply a quirk of the operating system, but one thing remained clear.  Prodigy was trusted at its word and given an unfair advantage none of us would have been able to enjoy.

For the first time, though, the community began to fight back in earnest.  The year-old Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Secret Service for 1990's raid against Steve Jackson Games in Texas.  This move would forever change the tone.  There was at least the chance of an injustice being challenged in the future.

We printed details of an Atari virus, which was rather unusual.  We published a comprehensive list of Soviet BBSes shortly before the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  As our nation once again marched off to war (albeit a very short one in Kuwait), we saw a bizarre memo from Pepsi saying it was canceling a contest that involved an 800 number because they didn't want to run the risk of disrupting communications in wartime.  We also printed the first picture of what would much later become one of our back cover themes: "2600 buildings" around the world.  This one was especially cool because it was right next to an AT&T building!

There was interesting telephone news in the Spring issue.  We printed the sad revelation that there were now no more crossbar switches in the 212 area code.  We also tried to dispel rumors concerning magical phone numbers that would somehow be able to tell you if your phone was being tapped.  And, most dramatically, we found an extra set of wires attached to our own fax machine's phone line that were heading up the telephone pole.  This implied that our faxes were being duplicated somewhere else.  (These days it would be a lot simpler to do this without leaving such telltale evidence behind.)

We ran editorials on page 4 in both the Summer and Autumn issues in what would soon become a regular feature.  The Summer editorial was titled "Where Have All The Hackers Gone?" and bemoaned the fact that many in the hacker community were going into hiding as a result of recent crackdowns.  "The fact that the overwhelming majority of hackers are not malicious is simply brushed aside as is the weak security that allows easy access to so many.'  The parallels between corporate and individual rights revealed a disparity.  We issued a call to share information and run more bulletin boards.  "A populace that knows how to manipulate technology to its advantage will result in a much healthier society."  But we were keenly aware of the dangers and of the threat we posed in the eyes of the authorities: "Now that we live in the world's only superpower, what or who will become the new enemy?"  Even though we were well aware that 'we have become pawns in a much larger game," it was clear that the ball was in our court.  "The strength of our efforts will determine whether we move into new and uncharted territory or simply repeat history yet again."  That editorial spurred a response from legendary hacker Lex Luthor in our letters column.

It became known in 1991 how the government calculated the inflated value of the E911 document from 1990 and we printed the full summation, which included salaries and entire computer systems.  In the end, their $79,449 value was found to actually be worth less than $15.  But that was par for the course as nobody was even reprimanded for these fraudulent claims and people even went to prison for accessing the document as if the original stated value was accurate.

We expanded 2600 meetings to San Francisco, giving us a grand total of two meeting locations in 1991.  We began using material from the Dutch hacker zine Hack-Tic that was translated for our audience, specifically an article on magnetic stripes.  We printed internal documents from Bellcore and Digital, along with a list of BBSes that ran UNIX.  What better way to learn that particular operating system?  (Hackers without access to UNIX were being prosecuted for breaking into corporate systems that ran it.)  The concept of "low tech hacking" was introduced in one of our articles, basically showing how you didn't even have to have a computer to be a hacker.

Also on the Dutch front, we saw unprecedented hacker raids unfolding in the Netherlands.  In an article penned by editors of Hack-Tic, we saw many of the same points being made as had been said many times in the States: "Against the real computer criminals a law is useless because they will probably remain untraceable...  It seems that hackers are an easy target when 'something has to be done.'"  In the end, the same conclusions would be reached regarding the futility of cutting off access: "As long as there is no way for some people to connect to the net, there will be people that hack their way in."

We saw the early days of Caller ID.  It was only available in limited areas and wouldn't work on anything but local calls.  And that was causing no end of controversy, as people were concerned over privacy while phone companies tried to disable any blocking mechanism that allowed anonymity.  We took great pains to explain the difference between Caller ID and ANI - and to show the vulnerabilities of each.  We also tried to warn people about the dangers of having their Social Security numbers spread around, something that corporate America seemed to have little interest in preventing.

One of our favorite exposes of the year was MCI's Friends & Family, a service that freely gave out all kinds of private information on its subscribers, as long as you supplied a phone number and (for security) a corresponding ZIP Code.

The writing was on the wall insofar as how hackers viewed weak security.  From our letters section: "It's incumbent on anyone connecting a computer to the phone lines to protect the data that's on it."  The potential for change that we were seeing through technology wasn't lost on us: "Computers are amazing devices that are radically shifting the pre-established power structures.  Expect a fight for the power."  We also knew that hackers weren't going anywhere anytime soon, despite all of the negativity we were facing.  "While operating systems may change, the basic frameworks will remain intact.  And the spirit of hacking links it all together."

There was no end to the injustices we covered, some of it involving unexpected victims.  The Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone (COCOT) industry we had previously railed against were found to be getting royally screwed over by AT&T and the local Bell Operating Companies.  We also focused on some really stupid technical policies in the war on drugs.  We saw the prosecution of the Amateur Action BBS begin, a California-based adult bulletin board that was targeted by authorities in what we saw as an extension of the mentality used in raiding hackers and now being used to target anything even remotely controversial.  Kevin Mitnick would write a piece describing his unfair portrayal in the book Cyberpunk, co-authored by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.  And Frank Darden, one of the hackers sent to prison based on the fraudulent claims by BellSouth was denied access to 2600.  "In the end, technical ignorance by the authorities prevents Darden from reading the only magazine that talks about the technical ignorance that put him in prison."

Throughout the year, we took pride in releasing controversial and groundbreaking information.  We shared leaked info on the SENTRY prison system.  We printed a list of bank identification numbers - at the time a closely guarded secret - which proved useful to many for all kinds of reasons that had nothing to do with fraud.  We showed people how to hack the postal system.  Our infamous Dutch hacker video was created, showing the ease with which military computer systems could be accessed.  We revealed the insecurity of Simplex locks, used on buildings and dropboxes nationwide, showing how any one of them could be compromised in mere minutes.  And we felt the frustration of being ignored by the media when revealing such truths, as outlined in the editorial "Why Won't They Listen?" in the Autumn issue.

But if anything summed up the spirit of mischief and triumph that so often was a part of the hacker world, it's this quote from a leaked memo whose contents we printed: "There is no proof that the hacker community knows about the vulnerability."

We sought to continue proving otherwise.

Spring:  The Spring 1991 cover had a rather unusual drawing: a restroom stall with a toilet, paper running out the door, and crime scene tape surrounding the entire scene.

Graffiti fills the wall with all sorts of cryptic phrases, representing the crime:

• "100,000 FOR ONE!"
• "BORED SKATERS ARE NOT A CRIME"
• "FREE FLAV!"  - A reference to musician Flavor Flav from Public Enemy who happened to be in jail at the time.
• "20,000 years human hopes + fears"  - A line from the Lothar and the Hand People song Space Hymn
• "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN"
• 3.14159 (pi) divided by what appears to be a meaningless number (8168.34?).
• "SECRET INFO INSIDE"  - Apparently referring to the contents of this issue.
• "action=life"  - A counterpoint to silence=death.
• "fangen wir mit der post an"  - A German phrase which translates to "we start with the post on."
• "watch yourself"  - The title of a Ministry song.
• "GEORGE ANDRINGO IS THE ANTICHRIST"  - A play on the name of Pope John Paul II whose two names also belonged to John Lennon and Paul McCartney - the first names of the two remaining members of The Beatles (George Harrison and Ringo Starr) were then merged to form the name "George Andringo."
• "HACKER JIHAD"
• "540-2600"  - 540 being the New York premium phone exchange known for ripping people off and the very last thing we would want next to our name.
• "p-kb4, p-k4, p-kn4, q-r5"  - Checkmate in four moves.
• "WAKE UP!  Take the pillow from your head and put a book in it"  - A line from Boogie Down Productions' Blackman in Effect
• "HELP *"  - An important command on a number of computer systems.
• "jesus saves BUT SATAN SCORES"  - Putting religion in terms of a hockey game.
• A bunch of numbers that we swear mean absolutely nothing.
• "dockmaster"  - The name of an NSA computer.
• "REPENT!"
• "PHIL OCHS WAS HERE"  - A tribute to the socially conscious folk singer.

The minicover featured a graphic exclamation point (it being the first issue of the year) with various displays of the number 2600.