40 Years of Phrack: Hacking, Zines & Digital Dissent

richinseattle, Netspooky, Chompie

DEF CON 33 · Day 3 · Main Stage

Phrack is the longest-running hacker technical publication in existence. Born in 1985 on a BBS in an era before the World Wide Web, it has survived Secret Service raids, legal battles, the commerciali

AI review

The current Phrack editorial team — richinseattle, Netspooky, and Chompie — deliver a 40th anniversary retrospective of Phrack, documenting the publication's history from 1985 BBS-era phone phreaking through 'Smashing the Stack,' heap exploitation, SMM bootkits, and to the present day. The talk also announces and distributes Phrack 72, the first issue under the new editorial team, with 15,000 physical copies across four conference-specific covers, a cross-continental binary exploitation CTF, and sixteen mainline technical papers.