Format
The 1996 cover formats varied wildly from issue to issue with both font and layout changes.
The individual issue price increased to $4.50 for the United States and remained at $5.50 for Canada.
With the exception of the Winter edition, all words in the masthead appeared in all caps.
For Winter, "The Hacker Quarterly" and the prices appeared in upper and lower case with the Canadian price no longer in parentheses.
The second page increase in two years brought the total number of pages up from 56 to 60 beginning with the Summer issue.
The page numbering scheme remained the same otherwise. The contents had the following unique titles:
- Spring: SEE HERE
- Summer: NATURAL SELECTION
- Autumn: WHAT YOU NEED
- Winter: MATTER
Little messages continued to be found on Page 3 masked into the dotted line that separated the contents from the mailing info.
These messages read as follows:
- Spring: "NOTWORK" The name of a just launched hackerspace in New York City that was affiliated with 2600.
- Summer: "ENCRYPT" A call to arms inspired by increasing threats from the authorities.
- Autumn: "SHOCK THE WORLD" Some overall good advice.
- Winter: "DOTTED LINE" Apparently we were out of ideas.
In the middle of each issue, our first two letters pages continued to take the form of one giant double page with an envelope icon spanning the whole thing.
Letters titles continued to be unique:
- Spring: "Where The Letters Are"
- Summer: "The Search for Extraterrestrial Letters"
- Autumn: "Going Totally Postal"
- Winter: "Your Letter Could Be Here"
Covers
The covers moved in a completely different direction this year.
Gone were the cover artists of the past, replaced with photography depicting a variety of scenes of interest to hackers.
Contributors varied for each issue. Credits were as follows:
- Spring: Phriend2 and GTE
- Summer: D.A. Buchwald
- Autumn: Mazzy
- Winter: Crowley, Kitten L'amour, and Seth McBride
Shawn West was also credited for each of the covers as he was the magazine's cover liaison.
Inside
The staff section continued to have credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout, Cover Design, Office Manager, Writers, Network Operations, Voice Mail, Webmasters, Inspirational Music, and Shout Outs. It remained on Page 2.
Starting with the Summer issue, we began to print our PGP key at the bottom of the page.
Unique quotes continued to be printed in the staffbox of each issue:
Spring: "It's not a computer crime to break into someone's system and just look around." - Susan Lloyd, a spokesperson for the FBI's Washington DC field office as quoted in the March 10, 1996 Boston Herald.
Summer: "If we're going to live in this kind of world, we're going to have to link the intelligence world with law enforcement." - Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) on a proposal to give the CIA power to begin domestic monitoring of U.S. citizens.
Autumn: "Attacks on Defense computer systems are a serious and growing threat. The exact number of attacks cannot be readily determined because only a small portion are actually detected and reported. However, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) data implies that Defense may have experienced as many as 250,000 attacks last year. DISA information also shows that attacks are successful 65 percent of the time, and that the number of attacks is doubling each year, as Internet use increases along with the sophistication of 'hackers' and their tools." - General Accounting Office report entitled "Computer Attacks at Department of Defense Pose Increasing Risks." It was later disclosed that the estimates were based on staged attacks from within the military.
Winter: "Some of the computer attack tools, such as SATAN, are now so user-friendly that very little computer experience or knowledge is required to launch automated attacks on systems. Also, informal hacker groups, such as the 2600 club, the Legions of Doom, and Phrackers Inc., openly share information on the Internet about how to break into computer systems. This open sharing of information combined with the availability of user-friendly and powerful attack tools makes it relatively easy for anyone to learn how to attack systems or to refine their attack techniques." - General Accounting Office report entitled "Computer Attacks at Department of Defense Pose Increasing Risks." The only names they got right in this quote were SATAN and Internet.
Mailing info continued to be printed on Page 3 as required by the post office. The Statement of Ownership was now on Page 5 in the Winter edition.
We found ourselves in the midst of a number of interesting stories in 1996. The Bernie S. case was prolonged by the Secret Service, who managed to get him put back into prison on a technicality after the events of 1995. It became clear that their vindictiveness was tantamount to torture and we were determined to make sure everyone knew what was going on.
One of the ways the Secret Service managed to convince a judge that Bernie S. was a huge threat was to portray his interests as dangerous, even though they were completely legal and comprised of public information. One example was his collection of Secret Service code names. While it was easy to portray someone who had this information as being up to no good, the truth was that the data was publicly available. So we used our still new website to help spread it around. We explained that "because the Secret Service overreacted at one person's possession of this material, millions of people around the world now had easy access to it." This was something the Secret Service certainly didn't see coming.
Despite our defiance, there was still much fear in the community, as vocalized by our readers who thought they too could easily become victims. The law, Title 18, USC ยง 1029 said that "possession of a technology which can be used in a fraudulent manner" was a crime. This could easily be interpreted to mean just about anything. And, in this case, that's pretty much what had happened. And it sure didn't help that no civil liberties group wanted to get involved to fight this case.
Hostility against the Secret Service grew as the facts of the case became known. We printed the full transcript of Bernie S.'s sentencing so people could read firsthand how the truth was being warped to punish him. We learned the previous year that they went after him simply because he had shared unflattering pictures of them that were captured, ironically, on a friend's surveillance camera.
Conditions in the various Pennsylvania prisons Bernie S. was transferred to were terrible. Once, he was even punished for receiving a fax from a reporter, a fax he had never even asked for. And then, after being transferred again, he was severely beaten by another inmate while trying to use the phone. He had been moved to a far more dangerous prison, a place he never should have been in, as punishment for some other minor violation. This was the last straw. We started to coordinate direct action, gathering dozens of people to go down there in buses and start demonstrating for his release. Amazingly, we still weren't able to get the EFF or the ACLjU to take an interest in the case. But that had no effect on our spirits and the snowball effect this case was achieving.
And then, just like that, it ended. One day, without fanfare, Bernie S. was released on an unprecedented furlough. It was obvious, though, that the pressure on the authorities had reached a breaking point. Elected officials had been calling them, the media was starting to nose around, and it just stopped being worth it for the Pennsylvania authorities to continue doing the Secret Service's bidding.
While all this was going on, questions were beginning to be asked about the Kevin Mitnick case and just how long it would be before we started learning what was really going on with it. What may have been the first use of the phrase "Free Kevin" can be seen on our Winter cover.
Our tussle with PSI over Internet service that began the previous year was resolved through "net action" and public shaming. In the past, such problems would have been dealt with in a courtroom and lots of money would have been wasted. Here, "all we had to do was speak up." By presenting the evidence (including audio) on our website, it quickly became apparent to PSI that the best way to deal with this case was to refund our money and move on. We were pleased with that.
We were all quickly learning about the power of the Internet. "With the growing popularity of the World Wide Web, anyone with the necessary access has the ability to become their own information disseminator, where people from around the world actually come to you for information of any sort." And while this was a great thing for people like us, it caused no end of concern for those who wanted control. "It's precisely because of the hacker mentality responsible for creating this medium that the authorities are in such a panic." We seemed to be feeling the effects of that panic more and more. But we knew that we could survive any attempts to regulate or cripple what we had if we all stuck together. "What we share is the understanding that free speech is paramount, individuality is a valuable asset, and that the Internet - which was developed with the hacker spirit - is potentially the most valuable tool that free speech, individuality, and hence humanity itself has ever had at its disposal."
The world of technology was changing in all sorts of ways. We saw the beginnings of online shopping. People were becoming very interested in hacking Macs. A new technology called CU-SeeMe allowed people to speak to and actually see each other over the Internet. The prospect of "emerging technology on the Internet that allows you to place voice and video calls around the planet with no per-minute charges" was absolutely fascinating to us, as only a few years earlier such a thing would have seemed unimaginable. We knew all of this would change the world. "People have seen the power of the Internet and they won't be very eager to hand it over to a corporate monopoly." But we weren't exactly celebrating anytime soon. In light of all of the crackdowns, there was a definite sense of foreboding. It seemed to be only a matter of time before this newfound freedom would be taken away. That's why we encouraged everyone to "maximize the potential of this technology while it is still in relative infancy."
The Communications Decency Act was overturned by a three judge panel in Philadelphia. And we saw the push to legalize microbroadcasting begin in places like Berkeley. Changes were on the horizon.
We saw articles that told of the continued use of "Beige Boxes" to make free phone calls and an imaginative screed on how to use commonly carried pagers as tools of revenge. We saw a growing interest in lockpicking, as well as criticisms of the misuse of technology by phone companies, specifically regarding the *69 feature which managed to override Caller ID blocking in many areas. Cell phones continued to be of real interest to hackers, with articles submitted about spoofing cellular service and reprogramming cell phones. In a typical issue, you could see an article on old fashioned radio-telephones followed by one on the new technology of chipcards or a discussion on methods of "unshredding" documents. We delved into the sensitive regions, printing an article on how to hack a cash register with some emphatic warnings about how this wasn't something to actually mess with, but we all deserved to know how the technology worked. Then we'd look at another sensitive region: Sarajevo after a devastating war, and what the infrastructure there looked like at the present. Many of our readers and writers expressed concern over the ever-expansive tracking of people or the growing number of transponders that were appearing on cars. For our part, we encouraged people like never before to use encryption on everything. For the first time, we printed our PGP key in the magazine. "Simply put, NSA is scared: terrified of Americans enforcing their own privacy with such strength." We saw the phrase "ethical hacker" used for the first time and witnessed the birth of a free email service called Juno. We also saw the start of a new Dutch hacker magazine called Klaphek.
Some of our funnier pages for this year included examples of AOL disciplinary letters, a couple of hacked web pages (belonging to the United States Department of Justice and the CIA), and a picture of a check we somehow received from AT&T for switching to their long distance service on a phone number that was actually owned by NYNEX. We didn't try to cash it.
There were plenty of new developments on the home front. For one thing, our second conference was officially announced. It would be called Beyond HOPE and it was set for August of 1997 (although the date was changed between issues since we didn't move fast enough to pay a deposit). Our WBAI radio show (Off The Hook) was now heard on Tuesday nights and was also able to be listened to on our voice BBS/voicemail system, which opened it up to people outside the New York metropolitan area for the first time. Of course, we were limited to a couple of listeners at once and the phone lines would be tied up for the duration. But our voice BBS continued to be popular for that and other unique features, such as having a Touch-Tone decoder, a Caller ID readout, and both moderated and unmoderated voice discussion boards. Our USENET newsgroup (alt.2600) had completely spiraled away and evolved into something else. Similarly, our #2600 IRC channel "developed a life of its own" and was no longer controlled by us. On the negative side, issues of the magazine had been coming out late due to distributor problems. We couldn't have anticipated the mayhem that would cause us in the near future.
We were blamed for denial-of-service attacks - allegedly inspired by an article we printed - which took down a popular New York Internet Service Provider. We defended pointing out "major design flaws" even when doing so caused chaos. Ironically, the ISP in question had no hard feelings towards us and viewed the incident as we did: growing pains of the Internet and a learning experience. There was an insanely strong reaction to an article on Disney that we had printed in the previous year. It seemed we had struck a nerve somehow. Similarly, we received no less than five letters explaining what mysterious painted markings on a road in Cincinnati meant after another reader had wondered about this in a previous issue.
There was no end of confusion over our "SPECIAL RED BOX ISSUE" that didn't contain a single article on Red Boxes. We caught a writer who had plagiarized an article and confronted it head on. We printed his apology, which we're pretty sure he wrote himself. People wondered why we seemed to be the only magazine that charged less for newsstand copies than for subscribers and we tried to explain our logic.
We also tried to steer people onto the right path because there seemed to be an awful lot who were veering off the road altogether. With every issue, we received reports of one sort or another of kids getting into trouble just for having a copy of our magazine. There was hostility towards hackers in all types of educational institutions, from middle school through college. So we didn't appreciate when people did anything to reinforce an already negative image. And we would never miss an opportunity to chastise someone when we felt it was deserved: A typical example: "By erasing files, you crossed the line from mischief to vandalism. That's nothing to be proud of." We had to understand that some of our readers were picking up copies for the wrong reasons, possibly because of the very mistruths that were being spread by our adversaries. It was essential to distance ourselves from people who did things like commit credit card fraud or cause destruction. They considered themselves part of the hacker community. We didn't.
We even went out of our way to drive home a point, printing an article in the Winter issue with the rather straightforward title of "How to Steal Things." It was a single page that basically described what the title indicated: how to commit mail order fraud without an ounce of hacker skill or spirit. We ran it as a bit of an experiment - to see how the hacker community would react. We'd have our answer in the next year.
For those readers who were in the true hacker community, we had some warnings. Too often, divisiveness was forming and new people were being dismissed or ridiculed. We knew it would destroy the community if it continued. We implored readers not to fall into groups and not allow themselves to be intimidated by others or, worse, to behave in a condescending manner to individuals who asked questions. We pledged to stay true to our ideals and to avoid falling into these traps. "If anyone can escape the predictable, it should be hackers."
Spring: Spring 1996 was a takeoff of a Time Magazine cover.
The "2600" font was changed to reflect this and a banner went down the upper-right proclaiming this as a "SPECIAL RED BOX ISSUE".
This was a joke on a couple of levels. Hackers everywhere were sick of hearing about Red Boxes, devices that basically were being used all over the country to get free phone calls. It was a really simple concept: a series of tones played into the mouthpiece of a Bell or GTE payphone would serve the same purpose as coins.
Other than coming up with unique and clever designs, there wasn't much to expand upon. So the very idea of us having an entire issue dedicated to this was meant to provoke groans.
It did, but for a very different reason.
Some readers were upset that they couldn't find any actual articles on Red Boxes in the issue! But we had an alibi as the other joke here centered on the fact that the cover was actually contained within a red rectangle, just like a Time Magazine cover. The "Red Box" was right there - on the cover.
There was a picture of a GTE payphone being unloaded by a masked man out of the back of a car in a field, complete with phone books.
Laid out along the top of the phone was a giant sign that said "ELITE". An inset showed another masked individual physically carrying the payphone across that same field.
Text on the cover was written, again in Time style, saying "Our Nation's Youth Run Amok" and "Corporations Living In Terror". It actually wasn't too far from the truth.
I have been working with 2600 Magazine since 1996, when I was published as the cover photographer for the second ever cover photo, after 2600 was illustrated by Holly Kaufman Spruch. The "Elite" sign was from a now defunct "Elite Dry Cleaners" and the payphone was really just the shell we had found abandoned.