Cybertech: The Cyberpunk Technical Journal
(or simply "Cybertek")
"Another cyberpunk/hacker's zine
covering all facets of computer technology, culture and security.
Subtitled "The Cyberpunk Technical Journal," this zine is more concerned
with hard technical information than with slickness or style. But, don't
let the scuzzy design fool you. There's a lot of neat stuff to be had
here. Articles cover a lot more than computer hacking. too. Phones, fax
machines, lasers, ham radios, garage door openers and other gadgets are
all dissected in search of "vulnerabilities". There's also information on
survival techniques, weapons, and how to change your identity. A
pleasingly dense packet of radical tech."
- G. Branwyn
Cybertech was released in March, 1990. The first issue was done on a TRS-80 Model 2, IBM PC Clone, and Atari 130XE with a 9 pin B&W dot matrix printer. We printed out the articles in condensed type, and hand pasted them and the graphics onto a blank sheet of paper. After that we used an AT&T PC6300 with PFS: First Publisher for the next seven issues. I think I still have the 20MB MFM drive from that first box lying around somewhere. Subsequent issues were done with various PCs and Ink Jet Printers using Microsoft Works, MS Word, and MS Publisher. Today Cybertech is created with Open Office and distributed in PDF format.
We received some pretty good reviews from various magazines: Factsheet Five, Wired, Mondo 2000, and Iron Feather Journal to name a few. The number of subscribers reached about 500 at one point, and I suspect most were making multiple copies and handing them out to friends. We gave the H/P community permission to do so during Summercon '92 in St. Louis. While it would have been nice to make a decent profit on the 'zine and turn it into a full-time business, it really was a labor of love and at best it probably broke even. All things considered it probably ran at a slight loss. Many subscribers had extra issues tacked onto their subscriptions if they took the time to correspond with us, and we gave out free lifetime subscriptions to anyone who helped us out in any manner as our way of saying "thanks". When we went to hacker cons or 2600 meetings, we always made copies of the current issue and gave them away to attendees. With the advent of the Internet, we can now distribute Cybertech to a wider audience for next to nothing.
"Cybertek
is *the* cyberpunk zine, if one's definition of cyberpunk is making use of available or appropriated technology to obtain, analyze and disseminate real information through legal or illegal channels. Information relating to survival or personal freedom is especially important within the context of this definition. Cybertek offers an excellent balance of 'hard' and 'soft' technologies and strategies to live a life free of authoritarian interference. We just received the last three issues of Cybertek, in which one will find schematics for a cheesebox (to turn two phone numbers into a loop line), a phone bug and a tone generator, tips on recognizing and looking through propaganda, knives as self-defense weapons, alternative news gathering techiques (zines, shortwave radio, CSPAN), guerilla warfare tactics, simple encryption techniques and steam power resources. It's 2600 recombined with The Poor Man's James Bond, it's *the* sourcezine for survivalist-hackers."For a while, Cybertech spawned a small following among the computer underground in the NY/CT area. You could buy copies off the shelf at Trash American Style, in Danbury, CT, and we maintained a presence on a few local BBSes. Local hacker groups used to help out with the grunt work of stuffing, stamping, and mailing envelopes. We also sponsored a couple local punk rock concerts for various charities in the area. For a while we maintained a place in Danbury. It was almost a perpetual party with all sorts of interesting people visiting at all hours, bringing food and alcohol. We'd go dumpster diving, and filled up the basement of the place with salvaged technology. In many ways it was a classic Cyberpunk existence.
Cybertech belongs to a special era of the computer underground. In the 1990s we began to see increased online connectivity with not only an explosion of BBSes and Fidonet, but also distinct nationwide online services such as AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve. The Internet has yet to come into existence as such, although its parent networks such as Arpanet were around. Things were poised to explode in more than one way. I remember during the Summer of 1991 I was working at a Boy Scout Camp in upstate New York. I didn't have a PC handy, so I was using a 5-subject spiral notebook to write article rough drafts in. One of my fellow counselors, who later wrote an article for Cybertech, had brought his shortwave receiver. We were listening to Radio Moscow, The Voice of America, and trying to get Radio Vilinus as the Cold War and the Soviet Union came to an end. I wondered if the risk of a strike against the US was going to increase as the Soviets lost control of their country and their nukes.
"Half of its pages are filled with source
code and schematics, and the disclaimer "For Educational Purposes Only" at
the bottom of every page lets you know this is really about getting your
feet wet and your hands dirty. Spooks pay through the nose for this kind
of tech; with a little intelligence and some elbow grease, you can play
the same games."
Cybertech was originally spelled "Cybertek". After about 7 or 8 years of publishing the 'zine this lawyer for Cybertek Corporation in Texas (I believe they were bought by CSC) sent me a letter telling me how his client had "Cybertek" tradmarked since 1974, and provided the appropriate documentation. Since I didn't want to be confused with a company that sells computer software to the insurance industry, I told them that I'd stop spelling it C-Y-B-E-R-T-E-K except in historical mention and in the back issues. So Cybertek becamse Cybertech. How anybody could have confused a cool cyberpunk 'zine out of the Northeast with a bunch of Texans selling insurance software is beyond me.
Cybertek Issue #1 - March/April 1990. Our first, funky, crudely slapped-together issue.
Cybertek Issue #2 - May/June 1990. This one was our first done with PFS:First Publisher on an 8086 AT&T PC6300 that would be the Cybertek workhorse for five years. This one was published right after the release of GURPS: Cyberpunk, and has a short interview with Loyd Blankenship (a/k/a The Mentor). Cybertek fans will also recognize the article on Pirate Radio that Sin and I wrote which seems to have propagated all over The Net. There was a schematic of an FM Broadcast Band amplifier that wasn't included in the article reprint, and is now available for your perusal.
Cybertek Issue #3 - September/October 1990. Phantom Writer's well-received essay "Why Cyberpunk?", Hanover Fist makes his first appearance, the Omega Man talks about economic survival, one of the first articles in a hacker magazine about data tapping, electronics improvisation information, and how TVs could be used to listen to (AMPS) cellular phones.
Cybertek Issue #4 - November/December 1990. This issue was more alternative medicine-focused with articles on the risks of being an organ donor, information on Dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), and the benefits of Ginseng. This was also the issue with the widely-distributed "Countermeasures" article. "Countermeasures" was yet another article that lost it's graphic element; in this instance schematics for "burn boxes". Issue #4 also had schematics for a wireless TV transmitter and Hanover Fist's article on Pragmatism.
Cybertek Issue #5 - January/February 1991. Our first "famous" issue in that an article from it was reproduced and made its way to Arpanet and Usenet. The article was Black Manta's garage door opener hacker. John Williams from Consumertronics contributed an article entitled Hiding Yourself which was pretty ironic considering how the 'zine came about. There were also cheesebox plans and some other interesting schematics. Jason Scott, who later founded textfiles.com and produced the BBS Dcoumentary, contributed some cool artwork.
Cybertek Issue #6 - March/April 1991. The First Anniversary Issue. The "picture" on the front cover was actually of the Cybertek Group when one of our West Coast members made a visit. We were trying to make it look hazy like some UFO photo, but the effect didn't come out the way I orignially desired. My wife commented that it looked like some wierd Rosarch inkblot. This issue had a really good (but probably now dated) article on visiting Mexico by Benny Gillette. I talked about hacking equipment available (at the time) from Radio Shack, and wrote a little about Caller ID. There was also a list of Herbal Medicines, and an article on Digital Voice and Multiplexing. John Williams talks about why you shouldn't hoard precious metals or stones, and writes in with some corrections for some previously published schematics. There is also a reprint of an article from (IIRC) USA Today about the simultaneous opening of automated garage doors in Irvine, CA. Since we had just printed Manta's article on the garage door hacker...
Cybertek Issue #7 - November/December 1991. Things slowed down over the summer. I took a job teaching archery and leatherwork at a Boy Scout camp in upstate New York, and the PC stayed home. In a way, being disconnected like that was refreshing. When I got back to "civilization", Issue #7 came out. The highlight of it was a rather good interview of Kurt Saxon, author of The Poor Man's James Bond. There were also articles on SIGINT, book and music reviews, resistance operations, more stuff on Caller ID, and Hanover Fist talking about setting up your own corporation.
Cybertek Issue #8. This was the last of the issues put together with PFS:First Publisher, and the end of what I consider "Volume I". RS-232 data taps, more SIGINT stuff, audio tone generation with a soundcard, schematics for "The Squealer" (handheld audio tone generator), wireless reception of cable TV (I just found myself talking about that on BinRev quite recently), and other stuff.
Cybertek "Volume 2" - Consiting of Issues 9-13. All sorts of neat stuff in this volume.
Issue #12 (July/August 1995) was the debut of my cheesebox project that later appeared in IIRG Technical Journal #3 (released July 15, 1995) and the Fall 1996 Issue of 2600. It was originally a Cybertek project that was later given to the IIRG for the Technical Journal after its appearance in Cybertek. I most likely sent them the version of the GIF that appeared in Cybertek which was sans the IIRG notations. At any rate the cheesebox plans and article were my sole creation that I distributed freely to several parties after first releasing them in Cybertek.
Cybertech Volume #3:
Number 1
Number 2
Number 3
Number 4
Number 5
Here is the collection of Classic Cybertech articles originally on
L0pht:
Editorial from Issue
#1
Comparison Of 12 vs.
20 Gauge Shotguns.
Another View On
Survival.
Home made
Armor
Solution #1: Go
Beserk
Special Forces Caching
Techniques
Corporate Data Security
Measures
Cellular Phone
Reception With a TV
Countermeasures
The Day After:
Household Hints
Digital Radio
Communications
Economic
Survival
Electronic
Expertise
FAX Tricks
Hiding
Yourself
Improvise With
Electronic Components
Some Interesting
ICs
It's Not Who's
Right, But Who's Left
The Kukri
Knife
Pirate
Radio
Pragmatism
Radio
Communications
Surplus
Weapons
Survival
Sunglasses
Survival
Kits
Why Cyberpunk?
Williams' Tips For
Wrenching Times
There was also 5 issues of an electronic version of Cybertech. These
were done during the mid 90's, and contained articles from the print
versions released during that time-frame.
Issue #1
Issue #2
Issue #3
Issue #4
Issue #5
