SCALE is opening a Phrack record set — a growing archive around the hacker e-zine founded in 1985, its St. Louis BBS roots on Metal Shop Private, and co-founding editor Knight Lightning (Craig Neidorf).

Why Phrack

Phrack (phreak + hack) has published irregularly since 17 November 1985 — 72 issues across four decades, ISSN 1068-1035. Early releases went out from Metal Shop Private, Taran King's St. Louis bulletin board, because the city "totally lacked bulletin boards that dealt with hacking or phreaking." SummerCon '88 convened in St. Louis; Knight Lightning edited through the E911 prosecution that helped catalyze the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Landmark philes include The Mentor's Hacker Manifesto, Aleph One's "Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit", and Fyodor's nmap introduction. Issue #72 (2025) marked the 40th anniversary with ~15,000 free hardcopies at DefCon, HOPE, and other conferences.

What's in the archive so far

The seed index lives at Phrack:

• Wikipedia — Phrack
• phrack.org — official site
• textfiles.com mirror — full run
• Phrack #20 — SummerCon '88, St. Louis
• United States v. Riggs and The Hacker Crackdown

Contribute

We are collecting BBS ephemera, issue mirrors, oral history from 314-era sysops, trial transcripts, and hardcopy release material.

Submit: up@scalepublishing.com — subject line Phrack records