A hacker named Bill Landreth was indicted for computer fraud in 1983, and convicted in 1984 of entering such computer systems as GTE Tele-mail's electronic mail network, and reading the NASA and Department of Defense correspondence within. Naughty boy! His name will come up again. 1983 also saw the release of
WarGames, and all hell broke loose. Certainly there had been plenty of hacker activity before the movie came out, but previous to WarGames those hackers were few in number and less visible. The exciting story of David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick), a school-age whiz kid who nearly starts World War 111,
became the basis for many modems for Christmas presents that year. Suddenly there was a proliferation of people on the hacking scene who were not really hackers in expertise or spirit. Bulletin board systems flour-ished, and a large number of boards catering to hackers, phreaks, warez dOOds (software pirates), anarchists, and all manner of restless youth sprung up.
The online publication Phrack was founded on November 17, 1985, on the Metal Shop Private BBS in St. Louis, Missouri, operated by Taran King and Knight Lightning. The term "online" referred to the fact that this magazine was distributed, not at newsstands and through the mails, but on the finews racks" of electronic bulletin board systems, where collections of files are available for the taking.
Later, when the journal's founders went off to college and received Internet access, the publication was distributed through list servers which can automatically e-mail hundreds of copies of the pub-lication throughout the world. Phrack is still dis-tributed in this way. As the name implies, Phrack deals with PHReaking and hACKing, but it also is pleased to present articles on any sort of mischief-making.
Annual conventions, hosted by Phrack, called SummerCons, are now held in St.
Louis.
