Phrack Magazine is an electronic magazine that was set up back in 1985 by Knight Lightning and Taran King. It was set up to be purely electronic, dedicated to computer and telecommunication enthusiasts. It contains articles on how the telephone company works, how computers works, operating systems, security techniques, switching systems and other aspects of telephony and electronics, as well as information about the latest happenings in the hacker underground.

The readers themselves provide the information. In the beginning Taren King and Knight Lightning edited the issues. When they first started both of them had just turned 16.

Phrack has been through various editors, including Crimson Death, Dispater, Lord Elrick and Sir Francis Drake. It is currently edited by Erik Bloodaxe and can be received free through the internet.

Phrack has had an interesting history. Phrack 24 was put out by Taran King and Knight Lightning and published in February of 1989. It contained an article on the E-911 emergency phone system in the United States. The Prophet, a member of the Legion of Doom, had obtained the document from a computer that was unpassworded and owned by Bell South. The Prophet sent the document to Phrack for publishing, he also stored it on a computer on Jolnet, this was about August 1988. The sysop found it and notified various people at AT&T. 2 issues of Phrack went by and Knight Lightning and Taran King held off from publishing it "the article wasn't that interesting. We held off publishing it for 2 issues just because we had better things to print. By the time we got to our 4th issue we needed a filler." So they put the E-911 document into Phrack 24 with dire consequences.

In July 89 the Secret Service raided the Atlanta members of the Legion of Doom in what are now known as the infamous Operation Sundevil raids. It wasn't until January of 1990 that the Secret Service came to question Knight Lightning aka Craig Neidorf at his fraternity house. "The Secret Service had been told by the phone company that it was extremely dangerous, extremely sensitive information that was being distributed that could cause alot of harm."

The following March a Federal grand jury was told that the document that Knight Lightning had printed in Phrack was worth 80 thousand dollars and was extremely dangerous to the public. The grand jury brought a Federal indictment against Knight Lighting. He faced 31 years in prison for the interstate transportation of stolen property, wire-fraud and violations of the computer fraud and abuse act.

"In July of 90 we went to court...the witnesses took the stand to try and prove that I had not just committed the crimes they were saying i committed, but to prove that the actions I took were crimes in the first place. The defense never had to put on a single witness, by the end of the week, the governments case had completely fallen apart. The now famous 80 thousand dollar E-911 document was proven to be [publicly] available for no more than 13 dollars from Bellcore."

Because the information was publicly available the case against Knight Lightning was dropped and the trial ended after only 4 days. Knight Lightning however is stuck paying off $100,000 in legal fees, the US government is immune from being sued. "Anything I had ever saved up for college has gone into paying it off."

If there was anything at all that came out of the E-911 case against Craig it was that there was a large public awakening to the rights of electronic journalism and to government intrusions to suspected hackers. Organisations like the EFF and CPSR were formed to look into people's rights and uphold civil liberties on the internet. Jim Warren started CFP (Computers, Freedom, Privacy) as a direct result of the Operation Sundevil raids and the case against Knight Lightning. Phrack is still being published and can be obtained via WWW, anonymous ftp or by subscribing. Phrack is still free to individuals but has now been copyrighted. Corporations and security professionals are expected to register their subscriptions.

For more information see:
Bruce Sterling's book The Hacker Crackdown
Many good files are offered via anonymous ftp @ftp.eff.org

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