Electronic Magazines: PHRACK Magazine

One thing that always comes out in history, especially recent history, are some heavy debates about who was the "first". The first time, the first time with this type of person, the first time using this new technology, and the rest. While there's probably lots of room to argue about who or what was the first "Hacker E-Zine", without any doubt the most famous is PHRACK.

Founded by Taran King and Knight Lightning in 1985, PHRACK started getting the attention of the BBS world a short time into its run, with its collections of information-filled articles and "Phrack World News" which would add some real character to the subculture. Later, Phrack "Pro-Philes" gave stories behind the handles and let people learn what made the more famous or infamous hackers what they were.

The format and genotype of these issues are brilliant, or at least a brilliant move. Instead of putting out a singular file by themselves, hackers and writers were encouraged to become part of the PHRACK brand, ensuring a wide audience for their writings and preventing themselves from being lost in the extremely choppy distribution channels of BBSes. (Although, as you've probably seen by the rest of the TEXTFILES.COM site, many files did very well on their own). Obviously this wasn't the initial intent of the editors of PHRACK, but no doubt their own success told them they were onto something big, very quickly into their run.

Speaking of Choppy, PHRACK's own history is very difficult to keep track of without a scorecard (which actually shows up in Issue #55!). The original editors gave way to new authors, who then found themselves not interested in the zine past a few issues and were taken up by still others. Taran King and Knight Lightning make appearances as editors for a second run, although this led to the infamous "E911" Affair, which is covered excellently in Bruce Sterling's Book, "The Hacker Crackdown". Yes, the document is still in the issue below, although truth be told it's in a lot of other places as well (and it's extremely boring, as many people have noted).

The PHRACK pages function as a who's who or yearbook of the more media-savvy and textfile-driven members of the different online communities. Through its many editors, writers, history and fame, PHRACK has stood alone.


Filename
Size
Description of the Textfile
PHRACK-1 29195
Phrack Issue #1 (1985)
PHRACK-2 55272
Phrack Issue #2 (1985)
PHRACK-3 58852
Phrack Issue #3 (January, 1986)
PHRACK-4 93420
Phrack Issue #4 (March 13, 1986)
PHRACK-5 123015
Phrack Issue #5 (April 18, 1986)
PHRACK-6 274892
Phrack Issue #6 (June 10th, 1986)
PHRACK-7 94983
Phrack Issue #7 (September 25, 1986)
PHRACK-8 110494
Phrack Issue #8 (June 25th, 1986)
PHRACK-9 93993
Phrack Issue #9 (September 28, 1986)
PHRACK10 86448
Phrack Issue #10 (January 1st, 1987)
PHRACK11 121103
Phrack Issue #11 (February 17, 1987)
PHRACK12 113158
Phrack Issue #12 (March 29, 1987)
PHRACK13 91400
Phrack Issue #13 (April 1, 1987)
PHRACK14 99398
Phrack Issue #14 (July 28th, 1987) (Last Issue)
PHRACK15 68481
Phrack Issue #15 (August 7, 1987) (Shooting Shark's Issue)
PHRACK16 68112
Phrack Issue #15 (November, 1987) Elric of Imrryr's Issue
PHRACK17 129662
Phrack Issue #17 (April 7, 1988)
PHRACK18 146763
Phrack Issue #18 (June 7th, 1988) (Crimson Death's Issue)
PHRACK19 73530
Phrack Issue #19
PHRACK20 321607
Phrack Issue #20 (October 12th, 1988) (Taran King and Knight Lightning Return)
PHRACK21 237367
Phrack Issue #21 (November 4th, 1988)
PHRACK22 255579
Phrack Issue #22 (December 23rd, 1988)
PHRACK23 173968
Phrack Issue #23 (January 25, 1989)
PHRACK24 209817
Phrack Issue #24 (February 25th, 1989) (The E911 Issue)
PHRACK25 194781
Phrack Issue #25 (March 29th, 1989)
PHRACK26 218735
Phrack Issue #26 (April 25th, 1989)
PHRACK27 294816
Phrack Issue #27 (June 20th, 1989)
PHRACK28 231529
Phrack Issue #28 (October 7th, 1989)
PHRACK29 235777
Phrack Issue #29 (November 17, 1989) (Fourth Anniversary)
PHRACK30 220015
Phrack Issue #30 (December 25th, 1989)
PHRACK31 166188
Phrack Issue #31 (May 28th, 1990) (DH's Issue)
PHRACK32 336568
Phrack Issue #32 (November 17th, 1990) (Crimson Death Returns)
PHRACK33 220363
Phrack Issue #30 (September 15th, 1991)
PHRACK34 154849
Phrack Issue #34 (October 13, 1991) (Crimson Death and Dispater)
PHRACK35 393843
Phrack Issue #35 (November 17th, 1991)
PHRACK36 186602
Phrack Issue #36 (December 31, 1991)
PHRACK37 343901
Phrack Issue #37 (March 1, 1992)
PHRACK38 364662
Phrack Issue #38 (April 26th, 1992)
PHRACK39 317977
Phrack Issue #39 (June 26th, 1992)
PHRACK40 702238
Phrack Issue #40 (August 1st, 1992)
PHRACK41 356726
Phrack Issue #41 (December 31st, 1992)
PHRACK42 475662
Phrack Issue #42 (March 1st, 1993)
PHRACK43 1152464
Phrack Issue #43 (July 1st, 1993)
PHRACK44 882090
Phrack Issue #44 (November 17th, 1993)
PHRACK45 901649
Phrack Issue #45 (March 30th, 1994)
PHRACK46 996308
Phrack Issue #46 (September 20th, 1994)
PHRACK47 807137
Phrack Issue #47 (April 15th, 1995)
PHRACK48 632705
Phrack Issue #48 (September 1st, 1996)
PHRACK49 569683
Phrack Issue #49 (November 8th, 1996)
PHRACK50 515216
Phrack Issue #50 (April 9, 1997)
PHRACK51 720873
Phrack Issue #51 (September 1, 1997)
PHRACK52 674941
Phrack Issue #52 (January 26th, 1998)
PHRACK53 468742
Phrack Issue #53 (July 8th, 1988)
PHRACK54 477362
Phrack Issue #54 (December 25th, 1998)
PHRACK55 701536
Phrack Issue #55 (September 9th, 1999)
PHRACK56 480844
Phrack Issue #56 (May 1st, 2000)
PHRACK57 497516
Phrack Issue #57 (August 11, 2001)
PHRACK58 534488
Phrack Issue #58 (December 27, 2001)
PHRACK59 778518
Phrack Issue #59 (July 28, 2002)
PHRACK60 733811
Phrack Issue #60 (December 28, 2002)
PHRACK61 800345
Phrack Issue #61 (August 13, 2003)
PHRACK62 896918
phrack62ann.txt 6077
Announcement of the Release of Phrack #62 (July 13, 2004)

There are 63 files for a total of 22,774,964 bytes.