[HN Gopher] Phrack Issue 70
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Phrack Issue 70
Author : bugmen0t
Score : 559 points
Date : 2021-10-05 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phrack.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phrack.org)
| coretx wrote:
| "the community is moving away from itself"
|
| - Setup a new zine and get one free editor from every
| intelligence agency in the world. - Organize a conference and
| have a fed do the keynote speech for you. Oh, wait...
|
| But seriously, people are indeed "moving" but for other reasons.
| The community and culture is dying because it is under attack by
| several highly advanced actors.
| [deleted]
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| What are those dot points a reference to? I'm OOTL. Never
| followed phrack though I have come across it quite a few times.
| coretx wrote:
| It's reference to general Keith Alexander and secretary of
| homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas having infiltrated,
| assimilated and neutered Defcon. The latter did the last
| keynote speech.
| tptacek wrote:
| What do you think Defcon was in the 1990s?
| bink wrote:
| As a former Defcon attendee from the 90s, what made
| Defcon so successful as a business IMHO was that it was
| run and managed by folks who were only tangentially
| associated with the wider hacking community. Most of us
| who considered ourselves "underground" would never have
| dreamed of commercializing a conference the way DT did.
| At best you'd sell t-shirts to help pay for the cost of
| the venue.
|
| It was definitely not associated with the military or
| govt. at the time though. That really came about with the
| founding of Blackhat and the open wooing of the Feds.
|
| I should also say that almost no "hacker" conference,
| even back then, was primarily attended by hackers. We
| used to joke back then that Defcon was a "retarded
| fashion show" (sorry for the offensive terminology).
| There were always more journalists, narcs, and hangers-on
| at cons back then than people who were actually hacking
| anything.
| tptacek wrote:
| As a former Defcon (and Summercon and Pumpcon) attendee
| from the 90s, I think this is revisionist. "Spot the fed"
| was a friendly game at Defcon years before Black Hat. Was
| Defcon more commercial than Pumpcon? Absolutely. It was
| in Vegas! Pumpcon was an overgrown 2600 meeting! But
| Summercon in 1995 had Bob Stratton and Winn Schwartau as
| speakers.
|
| The reality is simply that there aren't that many people
| seriously criming, and there weren't that many before.
| Attendance at these events has always been driven
| primarily from enthusiasts and spectators; you couldn't
| even fill a bar with the number of _meaningfully_ active
| people, even in 1995.
|
| (Obviously, this is a private-sector and America/Europe-
| centric observation).
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Who/what is "Setup a new zine and get one free editor from
| every intelligence agency in the world" a reference to?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Try it yourself and find out!
| Ansil849 wrote:
| So...just snark for the sake of snark? Or are there
| actual examples of this claim?
| ddingus wrote:
| It's in reference to powerful actors making sure they are
| involved and have visibility in these things.
|
| Flat out, not being aware of what people are capable of
| is a threat, and so they make sure they are aware.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I understand the broad point. What I am asking for is if
| there are specific examples of intelligence agencies
| infiltrating the staffing of hacker zines, which is what
| the parent was suggesting.
| ddingus wrote:
| Ahh, sorry. I do not have specifics myself. They may be
| hard to come by.
|
| In my experience, and I have some that is a good parallel
| but is also not software / hacking related, these things
| happen in layers. There is a core layer, call it the
| actor guild, who are three letter lifers, let's say. They
| are insular, not having broad contact outside trusted
| peers.
|
| These people won't be doing the work directly.
|
| They will seek others who have various inclinations and
| or liabilities who can do that work, or even more
| insidiously, they know who will do the work due to those
| inclinations or simply being misguided. These people may
| be almost entirely removed from the actors guild, or if
| associated, it's murky. They will be directed by people
| who clearly are of the guild, but also are not core.
| There are layers of these people who actually do the work
| and are in contact more generally and who also lack
| knowledge and or may well be unaware of the real purpose
| behind their actions.
|
| A good look at what was done, and frankly is still being
| done in various civil rights, environmental and political
| activist groups would hint very strongly at what I would
| be shocked to find is not being attempted (with some
| degrees of success) in these more technical circles.
|
| Life has taken me well into territory exposed to this
| stuff, and is currently taking me well out of it for now.
| Good opportunities tend to work that way, so this is
| largely a matter of curiosity for me and maybe more
| should I return to a closer place one day.
|
| In terms of things like activist collectives, I've seen
| the following:
|
| Promotion of people inclined to favor established
| interests, who then influence the potential of the group
| toward low value actions.
|
| Division. Basically, start shit among key players and
| watch the thing dissolve into uselessness meta.
|
| Pollution. Increase group size and or decrease coherency
| with a combination of people and misinformation.
|
| Dilution. Impact vital players in ways that reduce their
| agency and zeal to participate.
| jpcosta wrote:
| neutered in what sense? besides doing the keynote speech of
| course
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Yes, DEF CON now require government id to get in, that is
| sure sign it is neutered.
| creamytaco wrote:
| Corporate power, greed and profiteering is a much more
| substantial cause for the devastation of the "community". It
| used to be that hackers hacked (read the_uT prophile for a good
| definition on what hacking is) and -for the most part- stayed
| quiet. With everyone and his dog selling out to the highest
| bidder and maxing out self-promotion in his character sheet,
| that's certainly no longer the case. This is also reflected in
| (current) Phrack articles and authors, they're no longer an
| expression of the underground but of the corporate/infosec
| sphere that they belong to.
|
| The underground these days is to be found on 4chan and other
| related (or not) subcultures, just like the_uT wrote more than
| 12 years ago, but certainly not in infosec.
| bluedino wrote:
| Interestingly enough, Fortinet classifies this site as 'Extremist
| Groups'
| pvarangot wrote:
| Oh I do wish that was still true...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Sighz, 'pr0ud supp0rt3r 0f pr0j3kt m4yh3m' ;)
| Arrath wrote:
| It seems to be a fairly recent addition, a few months ago
| "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" came up on HN and I was
| able to read that just fine. Now the corpo-firewall locks me
| out. Its like they want me to be productive, or something.
| cogburnd02 wrote:
| 'meraki' or whatever my job is using seems to think it fits
| in the category 'illegal'. Ha!
| protomyth wrote:
| Cisco is meraki. Go figure.
| bronlund wrote:
| ((hugs))
| dogman144 wrote:
| I recently found a new-ish zine with similar content and current
| publication dates, loosely led by a principal sec eng at a FAANG,
| but can't recall the title. If anyone knows what I'm talking
| about, would love to know the pub's name.
|
| These security zines add so much value. Smashing the stack for
| fun and profit is taught in CS programs, for instance. I'd love
| to see this style of security research culture with the
| personality that it has return/grow outside of Project 0 blogs.
| _e wrote:
| The following two links have a nice collection of old & new
| zines:
|
| https://packetstormsecurity.com/files/tags/magazine
|
| http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/
| danceparty wrote:
| Maybe you are thinking of PoC||GTFO
| https://www.sultanik.com/pocorgtfo/
| nfoxai wrote:
| Principal sec feels off, but do you perhaps mean "Paged Out!"?
| The description rings true-ish.
|
| https://pagedout.institute/
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Also there is https://secret.club/
| dogman144 wrote:
| Yes! Thanks a ton.
|
| > currently: Google (IT security engineer)
|
| but idk his rank there.
| punk_ihaq wrote:
| Contributed last to Issue 67. Wow it's been forever.
| mathverse wrote:
| May I interest you in some cassoulet?
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| That's surprising. Last one was like 5 years ago.
| totorovirus wrote:
| wow I thought they were out of business
| stooliepidgin wrote:
| _We 're puttin' the band back together._
|
| https://youtu.be/4yECgXi3Y_8
| lolptdr wrote:
| Why does phrack.org domain not use SSL protocol?
| [deleted]
| amenghra wrote:
| (Partial) cached copy:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211005123424/http://phrack.org...
| wiseleo wrote:
| The band released a new album. :)
| _joel wrote:
| Wow, no there's a blast from the past! Great to see it back
| amenghra wrote:
| Fun to see a bunch of VM/JIT security articles and then a string
| format thing...
| sgt wrote:
| A string format thing in Solaris CDE!
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| Seriously, no https in 2021? For a website dedicated to security?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| what attack vector are you worried about? CIA man-in-the-
| middling a zine to make the articles less entertaining?
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| For the peace of mind of the readers, if nothing else.
| Firefox has a https only mode:
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/11/17/firefox-83-intr.
| ..
| yodelshady wrote:
| Fair point, but then, why bother with the PGP key?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Content isn't private the way email is.
| mindless_solips wrote:
| Thank you for this. The Love of Complexity is Real in this
| field. While I encourage and support the goals of anonymity
| and security everywhere, everything has its design envelope.
|
| This is an e-zine of public content. Sure, "SoMeOnE cOuLd
| InTeRcEpT", but why bother? Even with encrypted sockets, logs
| would still show your IP going to the site. What information
| are we trying to protect or malicious activity are we trying
| to stop by using SSL?
|
| ... And is it worth the unfortunate webmasters having to deal
| with bullshit like LetsEncrypt's root certificate expiration
| and all the main of keystores and PKI management so random
| "Very Serious People on the Internet" can say "ah, they
| follow The Standard on security."
|
| Controversial statement in 2021, I'm sure, but I think a use
| case for simple HTML over HTTP websites still exists. Your
| personal page with pictures of cats and your resume probably
| doesn't need to be some bastion of cybersecurity.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| There are ISPs that will happily inject ads and tracking
| codes into pages you visit. This obviously doesn't work
| over HTTPS.
|
| https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/157828/my-
| isp-b...
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/902635/isp-is-inserting-
| ads-...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/8ry1k4/does_your_is
| p...
| handrous wrote:
| Someone might MitM the hacking 'zine's site to display a
| Google login prompt, and the user will obviously trust an
| apropos-nothing Google login prompt on a hacking 'zine's
| site, and so have their Google credentials stolen. /s
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Well, points for coming up with something I hadn't thought
| of. Makes me grateful for my password manager filling
| things in based on domain.
|
| EDIT oh shit, just revealed I use a password manager,
| please fire me if I ever reveal which one.
| chedabob wrote:
| Ye was hoping to use that to get around our Sonicwall appliance
| blocking it for "Radicalization and Extremism"
| alasdair_ wrote:
| If only there was a zine that taught hacking techniques to
| bypass firewalls...
| channel_t wrote:
| Call me old-fashioned, but in this modern day internet where
| almost everything is optimized to be as distracting as possible,
| it's a real breath of fresh air to still be able to read premium
| technical content in plain text form.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I am with you on this. I truly hope the years of social media
| exuberance are beyond us and we return to our communities of
| friends in specialized microcosms.
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| They wink at the fact that the hacker community has changed, but
| Phrack is also (afaik?) still run by old fogies who don't
| necessarily reflect "new" hacker communities. It could be that
| the "community" already has its own new "Phrack". One found only
| on live-streamed dark-web sites, or podcast, or whatever passes
| for a party line these days.
|
| The world is more antagonistic to the Black Hat ethos now. Those
| in the West that have gotten fat off of bug bounties and infosec
| contracting may not have anything to do with "real hacking" now.
| They probably assume the hacker community will always be anglo-
| centric. But I'm sure Russia and China is rife with underground
| wares, as is probably Brazil and large swaths of Eastern Europe.
| Many hackers are probably inspired more by religion or
| nationalistic fervor than a bug bounty, yet they still need to
| research to perform epic feats and compromise national defenses.
|
| Who knows what communities lie outside the domain of a 36 year
| old text periodical? The net is vast and infinite.
| sgt wrote:
| I think someone on HN would then know about it.
| mathverse wrote:
| The community is english centric not anglo-centric.Eastern
| Europe is already pretty much part of the West unless you mean
| different kind of Eastern Europe (Belarus,Ukraine..)
|
| China,Russia,Brazil think of exploits and exploitation
| techniques as wares to keep or use as weapons.There is not much
| sharing or exchange of ideas.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh no, Russia is still a veritable bastion of sharing.
|
| It's the one place where you can get clean, good Adobe CC
| shit conveniently packaged in a good old Master Collection
| format.
|
| Torrent forums without the ridiculous ads and popups.
|
| The only place I could find firmware hacks for various
| hardware including some brilliant mods for SFP routers and
| washing machines.
|
| There still seems to be a sense of solidarity although I
| don't really like it since it's the old "fuck them all
| western shits".
|
| Chinese net pops up every now and then. It's just hard to
| navigate, hence it's very much unknown to western users. But
| I know there's troves of cool stuff there.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| One definition of "anglo-" as a prefix is literally just a
| fancy (or shorter) way of saying "English-".
|
| The Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian _states_ see exploits
| mainly as weapons. As does the US state....
|
| The question is whether a hacker culture apart from state
| control exists, of hackers interested in ideas for their own
| sake/the challenge/the lulz. Without being in those scenes or
| even speaking those languages, I couldn't say. (But maybe you
| have knowledge?)
|
| As in above parts of these comments, threads where people
| wonder if the corresponding cultures in the USA have been
| entirely "neutered" by state and corporate involvement, the
| question is not irrelevant to the US or European or English-
| speaking worlds either.
| mathverse wrote:
| That was the basis of my comment.That the hacker culture
| does not really exist in those countries like it used to
| (it still does?) in the West.
|
| The scene is motivated by self interest and is afraid to
| lose exploits/techniques that they can trade for $$$ and
| power.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh yeah, what's your level of Russian or Chinese?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| pretty amazing to see Phrack pop up here and there. Totally cool
| with them doing an issue every 4-5 years.
|
| Always nice to see that proper old skool textfile ascii art mag
| format. Had copies stored on floppy disks back in the day! Gives
| me such a early-mid 90s vibe and demoscene vibe also
| ltr_ wrote:
| nice to see phrack back again. I still remember "Smashing the
| stack for fun and profit", the article that back in the days made
| me have an epiphany about C, pointers and memory in general.
| eulers_secret wrote:
| I re-read that article just a couple weeks ago to help complete
| a work-related security challenge!
|
| I also had to disable ASLR (echo
| 0|/proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space) and the executable was
| 32-bit. A lot has changed since those days :)
| mlang23 wrote:
| I remember listening to a CCC presentation around 23C3 with a
| very similar title, which basically did the same for me.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Yeah, in these circles "for fun and profit" rivals the
| "considered harmful" of the larger community.
| [deleted]
| platz wrote:
| What would be the appropriate comparison/relation between 2600
| and Phrack?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I would say 2600 is more counter-culture / anti-authoritarian /
| political, and Phrack is more just about the technical stuff.
| To give a recent example, 2600 gave their support for BLM:
|
| https://www.2600.com/node/37570
|
| Which lost them a bit of support (although perhaps gained some
| as well?).
|
| 2600 is also pretty good at never missing an issue (quarterly),
| and also runs actual prints.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| That said, Phrack is where I learned things like this (not
| that I have ever or will use the knowledge):
|
| http://phrack.org/issues/1/7.html
|
| So it has it's counter culture roots.
|
| Edit: Which I actually just noticed is from 2600 so I guess
| the point stands?
| Raro wrote:
| Ohhh, that's where this came from!
|
| I directed a short film in the late 90s and we used this as
| an 'event' at a party (minus the floating part). We removed
| the glass from a light bulb to act as a remote fuse.
| Acetylene was perfect, as it gives this wonderful 'crack,'
| much better than the LPG we first tried. It was Tim's idea.
|
| Please do not try this!
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| 2600 is highschool gym class, Phrack is a pick-up game between
| pro ball players
| alex_anglin wrote:
| 2600 had paper issues and local meetups all over the place.
| op00to wrote:
| has in both cases.
| mattl wrote:
| There were meetings last Friday.
|
| https://www.2600.com/meetings
| platz wrote:
| Had? Im pretty sure I saw my local MicroCenter have issues of
| 2600 recently (which I also find somewhat amusing)
| drivers99 wrote:
| It's also available at Barnes & Noble.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Print copies of 2600 are very much still a thing. I saw
| plenty on the shelf at the local Barnes & Noble store as
| recently as last night.
|
| There's also still a local meeting in Raleigh, although I
| understand it's somewhat lightly attended these days.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| rip navs. you were a positive influence for many and I am glad to
| have gotten to know you while you were here.
| m00dy wrote:
| There is also a guy from Denmark, he has been writing cool stuff
| at https://secret.club/.
| mikecoles wrote:
| Thank you, phrack.
|
| Blacklisted411 was another zine you may be interested in hunting
| down if you enjoyed the genre.
| mfrw wrote:
| >> Phrack! We're back! It was only five years ago that issue 0x45
| was released.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Kudos to Phrack on their longevity, even if they get hugged to
| death this morn ;)
| dt3ft wrote:
| It's down. Are they hosting this static site on a calculator?
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| it is not static since it is constantly hacking your brains
| gpderetta wrote:
| It is secretly hosted on fb.
| neilsimp1 wrote:
| I've never heard of Phrack before, but a plain text-based zine is
| a prime candidate for Gemini/Gopher if I ever saw one.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Somebody's extra paranoid with that key.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| Man this takes me back. I got my start into being interested in
| programming, tech with Phrack in the late 80s while in middle
| school.
| WJW wrote:
| Same! I remember doing some very basic stuff with BASIC and
| SuperLogo back in the day and fairly quickly becoming
| disillusioned with a feeling of "is this all there is?". Then I
| discovered an early edition of Phrack discussing NOP slides and
| advanced (to me, at the time) techniques for injecting code
| into already running binaries. It opened my eyes to how deep
| the rabbit hole really goes.
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