How to Log URL Request Strings

by Alien Time Agent, Seraf, and Waldo

     Phacking (postal hacking) has enjoyed a glorious but obscure history in 
the United States, beginning with the godfather of phacking, Samuel Osgood.  It
wasn't until the summer of 1969 that Zip C0de brought phacking into the public
eye.  While he was only 20 years of age at the time, he had already caught the
attention of authorities.  For Zip C0de, C-Note, PhedEx, and the other brave
pioneers, here is a brief history of hacking the U.S. Postal System.

1789: Samuel Osgood named first United States Postmaster General under
Constitution.

1793: Postal employee Norman Beemish kills three co-workers and injures
six with a bow-and-arrow, becoming the first person to "go postal."

1847: Prepayment by postage stamps becomes law.  James M. Rolk, the first
stamp forger, discovers that a stead hand means cheap postage.

1859: Air Mail invented when John Wise flies 150 pieces of mail from
Lafayette, Indiana to Crawfordsville, a distance of 30 miles.  Unfortunately,
he was aiming for New York City.

1860: The Pony Express established.  Death toll mounts and it ends.

1870: Martha Bridgefaulks packs herself into a shipping crate and mails
herself to California in an effort to save money.

1911: Postal Saving System begins to compete with banks.  Fails within
55 years; bank slips prove as easy to fake as stamps.

1928: The "USPS Worm," a rapidly-reproducing chain letter, tangles nearly
every post office in the country, exploiting the GNU Mailbag security hole.
It originated at Harvard University.

1929: Pneumatic tubes are popularized in Paris, New York, Berlin, and
London.  Found to be an excellent Weinerdog Transferral System, resulting in
its misuse and quick failure.

1941: Reduction of passenger train usage leads to the Highway Post Office
Service.

1955: Photocopying stamps proves cheap and easy method of mail hacking.

1959: Missile mail tested by a launch from a submarine to mainland
Florida.  Subsequent tests all end poorly - worst of all in a Texas to Mexico
venture that knocked a hole in a Mexican building.  Thousands of pieces of
mail were held by the Mexican government.

1960: Facsimile mail is tested by the U.S. Postal Service.  It takes
them 20 years to realize that it's a bad idea.

1963: The Postmasters, a Texas mail hacking group, are arrested for their
exploitation of the now-famous "E7" routing hole.  All are released for 
information they provide regarding flaws in the new Zone Improvement Plan.

1964: Increase in domestic air mail leads to end of highway mail.  Makes
travel via U.S. mail that much more attractive.

1969: Dan Davis, aka "Zip C0de," a widely recognized postal hacker and
member of the Pueblo, Colorado phacking group "The Postmasters," coins the
term "phacker" in his organization's magazine, E7.  E7 lasted
just five issues but it linked hundreds of phackers who had previously believed
themselves to be acting alone.

1970: The Postal Reorganization Act signed into law, turning the post
office into a government-owned corporation.  The ends government control over
the USPS.

1973: Frederick W. Smith, aka "PhedEx," starts Federal Express to
compete with the USPS.  Federal Express is the first service to offer overnight
delivery.  It proves immediately successful due to the phacking experience of
PhedEx.

1974: The Postmasters' East Coast Division splits off to form the
Postmasters of Doom (PoD), taking with them many of the original members of the
Postmasters, notably "Dr. Snort," who was working as the Postmaster General
of the Nassau Division of the New York Postal Service.  Other members included
Post Officer, X-Press, C-Rate, and Maleman.

1976: Marvin Runyon, aka "The Courier," is caught in an attempted bust on
The Postmasters.  He takes the fall for the entire group, and service eight
months of his 13 year sentence before agreeing to work for the USPS, under
intense pressure from the authorities.  The property of his business, Courier
Systems, was confiscated in the bust is what many legal experts have called
"the worst violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act."  He never recovered his
stamps, scales, envelopes, or sponges.

1977: Zip C0de is arrested for mail fraud at a cost of $573,000 to the
government, ultimately proving that he did, in fact, owe $0.15 to the USPS.
Despite rumors that he'd used the now-infamous Double Stripe bug, it was
actually a case of social engineering.

1983: Maleman creates the ZIP+4 presort, an idea which is quickly adopted
by the USPS.  Maleman receives an undisclosed sum from the USPS, some of which
he uses to outfit PoD with new equipment, including bar-code scanners, 
ultraviolet printers, holographers, and computers.

1985: Dick D. James, aka "C-Rate" and still-active PoD member, starts
Roadway Package Service.

1986: The propagation of stamp scanners reduces required manpower for the
USPS.  Phackers discover that a smear of Vaseline where the stamp would be
permits free postage.  USPS responds with the introduction of proprietary
ultraviolet scanning technology.

1990: Universal Product Coding introduced for business-class mail.
The Postmasters quickly discover and exploit the two millimeter third-bar flaw.

1992: PoD Security Solutions is formed, a private security consulting
firm which enjoys immediate success.

1994: USPS introduces new Eagle logo at an estimated cost of $65,000,000.

1995: Maleman, one of the founding members of PoD, goes underground,
decrying the "commercialization" of phacking.  He is suspected to be somewhere
in Manhatten, running NonFunc, a mysterious cutting-edge phacking group, which
is the first group to mix 'sendmail' hackers and USPS hackers.

1998: Phacking flourishes, was with many as fifteen dedicated, active
groups in the United States.  This is largely ascribed to the widespread use
of technology including ultraviolet inks, optical character recognition, 
drum-based sorting, and standard bar-coding, all of which offer new and exciting
possibilities to today's modern, cosmopolitan phacker.