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The Best Of The Best Phreaker's Manual
FORWARD
Ok I have worked many weeks on compiling the information in
this VERY large Phreakers Manual. As you can see from the Tabel of
Contense, this Manual covers a wide field of topics, from Phreaking,
To hacking to Carding. I Hope some of you will get as much out of it
as I did. I know some of the topics are out dated, but it still
makes a DAMN good reading piece. All the articals are in full and
credit given to the authors. Anyways Get to work and start reading
and then do some hacking or phreaking ot a little carding on the
side. Have a Good time and let me know if you have any good work
to add to this Manual.
Time Bandit (TBH)
Tabel Of Contense
=================
Forward < Time Bandit >...... 1-i
1- The Bell Glossary < Net Runner>.........1-01
2- MCI Glossary < Star Rider >........1-05
3- AT&T Forgery < Net Runner >........1-12
4- Electronic Fraud Device < Doc Silicon >.......1-14
5- Secrets Of The Little Black Box:
The Captain Crunch Story < Ron Rosen Baum >....1-18
6- Files By XTC < XTC >...............1-46
a- Wire Tapping And Diverst < XTC >................ 46
b- Essence Of Phone Conf < XTC >................ 48
c- Phone Tapping < XTC >................ 49
7- Phreaking COSMOS < Freddy >............1-52
8- FACS FACTS < Freddy >............1-54
9- The History Of British Phreaking < Lex Luthor >........1-55
10- The History Of ESS < Lex Luthor >........1-58
11- Pen Registering And Tracking < XTC >...............1-60
12- Interesting Thing To Do on Step
Lines < XTC >...............1-60
13- Phreakers Phunhouse < Doc Silicon >.......1-61
14- Telenet < Doc Silicon >.......1-67
15- BAD as SHIT < Grim Reaper >.......1-68
16- Private Sector Bust < Shooting Shark >....2-69
17- Phreaking AT&T Cards < Net Runner >........2-73
18- Basic Telecommunications < Net Runner >........2-74
19- Something About Your Phone Co. < Col Hogan >.........2-76
20- Files By Al.P.H.A < Al.P.H.A>...........2-77
a- Jesters Guide to 0266's < Jester >............. 77
b- Code Hacking Done Right < Captain Kidd >....... 78
c- Surving at Night < Falcon >............. 82
d- Basic Carding Plus < Al.P.H.A >........... 85
21- The Computer Underground < Byte Bandit >.......2-113
22- Introductions To PBXs < Grim Reaper >.......2-133
23- Intro To Phreaking < Cat-Trax >..........2-135
24- Some Notes On Line Noise < Captain Kidd .......3-139
25- Guide to H/C/P < The Dark Lord >.....3-141
26- LOD/H Bust < Pizza Man >.........3-148
27- Operation Sundevil < Phreak_Accident>....3-154
28- The Art of Investigation < The Bulter >........3-162
29- Phreak Primer < Frankie >...........3-170
31- Hacking Tymnet < Unknown >...........3-176
32- The Phreakers Handbook #1 < Phortune 500 >......3-179
33- 950's The Real Story < Jester >............3-205
34- ANI < Jester >............3-206
35- Area Code List < Net Runner >........4-210
36- Bible Of Fraud < Sneak Theif >.......4-212
37- The Do's and Don't Of Phreaking < The Jester >........4-217
38- Field Freak < Home Boy >..........4-221
39- Telephone Works < EggHead Dude >......4-225
40- The End Was Bound To Come! < Captain Kidd >......4-229
41- Computer Crimes, Past and Present < Captain Kidd >......4-232
42- How To Get $30 A Day From AT&T < Tesla >.............4-236
43- Pirates Bust < Time Bandit >.......4-239
44- Bust Will Follow < Amiga #1>............ 241
45- Wrap Up < Time Bandit >........ 243
The Bell Glossary - by < Net Runner >
ACD: Automatic Call Distributor - A system that automatically
distributes calls to operator pools (providing services such as
intercept and directory assistance), to airline ticket agents.
Administration: The tasks of record-keeping, monitoring,
rearranging, prediction need for growth, etc.
AIS: Automatic Intercept System - A system employing an
audio-response unit under control of a processor to automatically
provide pertinent info to callers routed to intercept.
Alert: To indicate the existence of an incoming call, (ringing).
ANI: Automatic Number Identification - Often pronounced "Annie," a
facility for automatically identify the number of the calling party
for charging purposes.
Appearance: A connection upon a network terminal, as in "the line
has two network appearances."
Attend: The operation of monitoring a line or an incoming trunk for
off-hook or seizure, respectively.
Audible: The subdued "image" of ringing transmitted to the calling
party during ringing; not derived from the actual ringing signal in
later systems.
Backbone Route: The route made up of final-group trunks between end
offices in different regional center areas.
BHC: Busy Hour Calls - The number of calls placed in the busy hour.
Blocking: The ratio of unsuccessful to total attempts to use a
facility; expresses as a probability when computed a priority.
Blocking Network: A network that, under certain conditions, may be
unable to form a transmission path from one end of the network to
the other. In general, all networks used within the Bell Systems
are of the blocking type.
Blue Box: Equipment used fraudulently to synthesize signals,
gaining access to the toll network for the placement of calls
without charge.
BORSCHT Circuit: A name for the line circuit in the central office.
It functions as a mnemonic for the functions that must be performed
by the circuit: Battery, Overvoltage, Ringing, Supervision, Coding,
Hybrid, and Testing.
- 1 -
Busy Signal: (Called-line-busy) An audible signal which, in the
Bell System, comprises 480hz and 620hz interrupted at 60IPM.
Bylink: A special high-speed means used in crossbar equipment for
routing calls incoming from a step-by-step office. Trunks from such
offices are often referred to as "bylink" trunks even when incoming
to noncrossbar offices; they are more properly referred to as "dc
incoming trunks." Such high-speed means are necessary to assure
that the first incoming pulse is not lost.
Cable Vault: The point which phone cable enters the Central Office
building.
CAMA: Centralized Automatic Message Accounting - Pronounced like
Alabama.
CCIS: Common Channel Interoffice Signaling - Signaling information
for trunk connections over a separate, nonspeech data link rather
that over the trunks themselves.
CCITT: International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative
Committee- An International committee that formulates plans and
sets standards for intercountry communication means.
CDO: Community Dial Office - A small usually rural office typically
served by step-by-step equipment.
CO: Central Office - Comprises a switching network and its control
and support equipment. Occasionally improperly used to mean "office
code."
Centrex: A service comparable in features to PBX service but
implemented with some (Centrex CU) or all (Centrex CO) of the
control in the central office. In the later case, each station's
loop connects to the central office.
Customer Loop: The wire pair connecting a customer's station to the
central office.
DDD: Direct Distance Dialing - Dialing without operator assistance
over the nationwide intertoll network.
Direct Trunk Group: A trunk group that is a direct connection
between a given originating and a given terminating office.
EOTT: End Office Toll Trunking - Trunking between end offices in
different toll center areas.
ESB: Emergency Service Bureau - A centralized agency to which 911
"universal" emergency calls are routed.
- 2 -
ESS: Electronic Switching System - A generic term used to identify
as a class, stored-program switching systems such as the Bell
System's No.1 No.2, No.3, No.4, or No.5.
ETS: Electronic Translation Systems - An electronic replacement for
the card translator in 4A Crossbar systems. Makes use of the SPC 1A
Processor.
False Start: An aborted dialing attempt.
Fast Busy: (often called reorder) - An audible busy signal
interrupted at twice the rate of the normal busy signal; sent to
the originating station to indicate that the call blocked due to
busy equipment.
Final Trunk Group: The trunk group to which calls are routed when
available high-usage trunks overflow; these groups generally "home"
on an office next highest in the hierarchy.
Full Group: A trunk group that does not permit rerouting
off-contingent foreign traffic; there are seven such offices.
Glare: The situation that occurs when a two-way trunk is seized
more or less simultaneously at both ends.
High Usage Trunk Group: The appellation for a trunk group that has
alternate routes via other similar groups, and ultimately via a
final trunk group to a higher ranking office.
Intercept: The agency (usually an operator) to which calls are
routed when made to a line recently removed from a service, or in
some other category requiring explanation. Automated versions (ASI)
with automatic voiceresponse units are growing in use.
Interrupt: The interruption on a phone line to disconnect and
connect with another station, such as an Emergence Interrupt.
Junctor: A wire or circuit connection between networks in the same
office. The functional equivalent to an intraoffice trunk.
MF: Multifrequency - The method of signaling over a trunk making
use of the simultaneous application of two out of six possible
frequencies.
NPA: Numbering Plan Area.
ONI: Operator Number Identification - The use of an operator in a
CAMA office to verbally obtain the calling number of a call
originating in an office not equipped with ANI.
PBX: Private Branch Exchange - (PABX: Private Automatic Branch
Exchange) An telephone office serving a private customer, Typically,
access to the outside telephone network is provided.
- 3 -
Permanent Signal: A sustained off-hook condition without activity
(no dialing or ringing or completed connection); such a condition
tends to tie up equipment, especially in earlier systems. Usually
accidental, but sometimes used intentionally by customers in
high-crime-rate areas to thwart off burglars.
POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service - Basic service with no extra
"frills".
ROTL: Remote Office Test Line - A means for remotely testing
trunks.
RTA: Remote Trunk Arrangement - An extension to the TSPS system
permitting its services to be provided up to 200 miles from the
TSPS site.
SF: Single Frequency. A signaling method for trunks: 2600hz is
impressed upon idle trunks.
Supervise: To monitor the status of a call.
SxS: (Step-by-Step or Strowger switch) - An electromechanical
office type utilizing a gross-motion stepping switch as a
combination network and distributed control.
Talkoff: The phenomenon of accidental synthesis of a
machine-intelligible signal by human voice causing an unintended
response. "whistling a tone".
Trunk: A path between central offices; in general 2-wire for
interlocal, 4-wire for intertoll.
TSPS: Traffic Service Position System - A system that provides,
under stored-program control, efficient operator assistance for
toll calls. It does not switch the customer, but provides a bridge
connection to the operator.
X-bar: (Crossbar) - An electromechanical office type utilizing a
"fine-motion" coordinate switch and a multiplicity of central
controls (called markers).
There are four varieties:
No.1 Crossbar: Used in large urban office application; (1938)
No 3 Crossbar: A small system started in (1974).
No.4A/4M Crossbar: A 4-wire toll machine; (1943).
No.5 Crossbar: A machine originally intended for relatively small
suburban applications; (1948)
- 4 -
MCI Glossary - By < Star Rider >
- A -
A & B LEADS: Designation of leads derived from the midpoints of the
two 2-wire pairs comprising a 4-wire circuit.
ABBREVIATED DIALING: The ability of a telephone user to reach
frequently called numbers by using less than seven digits. Synonym:
Speed Dialing ACCESS CHARGE: A fee paid for the use of local
lines.
ACCESS CODE: A digit or number of digits required to be connected
to a private line arranged for dial access.
ACCESS LINE: A telephone circuit which connects a customer location
to a network switching center.
AIRLINE MILEAGE: Calculated point-to-point mileage between terminal
facilities.
ALL TRUNKS BUSY (ATB): A single tone interrupted at a 120 ipm
(impulses per minute) rate to indicate all lines or trunks in a
routing group are busy.
ALTERNATE ROUTE: A secondary communications path used to reach a
destination if the primary path is unavailable.
ALTERNATE USE: The ability to switch communications facilities from
one type of service to another, i.e., voice to data, etc.
ALTERNATE VOICE DATA (AVD): A single transmission facility which
can be used for either voice or data.
AMERICAN STANDARD CODE FOR INFORMATION INTERCHANGE (ASCII): An 8
level code developed for the interchange of information between
data processing and communications systems.
ANALOG SIGNAL: A signal in the form of a continuous varying
physical quantity, e.g., voltage which reflects variations in some
quantity, e.g., loudness in the human voice.
ANNUNICATOR: An audible intercept device that states the condition
or restrictions associated with circuits or procedures.
ANSWER BACK: An electrical and/or visual indication to the calling
or sending end that the called or received station is on the line.
ANSWER SUPERVISION: An off-hook signal transmitted toward the
calling end of a switched connection when the called party answers.
- 5 -
AREA CODE: Synonym: Numbering Plan Area (NPA). A three digit number
identifying more than 150 geographic areas of the United States and
Canada which permits direct distance dialing on the telephone
system. A similar global numbering plan has been established for
international subscriber dialing.
ATTENDANT POSITION: A telephone switchboard operator's position. It
provides either automatic (cordless) or manual (plug and jack)
operator controls for incoming and/or outgoing telephone calls.
ATTENUATION: A general term used to denote the decrease in power
between that transmitted and that received due to loss through
equipment, lines, or other transmission devices. It is usually
expressed as a ration in db (decibel).
AUDIBLE RINGING TONE: An audible signal heard by the calling party
during the ringing-interval.
AUTHORIZATION CODE: An identification number that the caller enters
when placing a call which is used for billing purposes.
AUTHORIZED USER: A person, firm, organization, corporation or any
other entity authorized by the customer to send or receive
communications over a specific communications network.
AUTO ANSWER: A machine feature that allows a transmission control
unit or station to automatically respond to a call that it
receives.
AUTOMATIC CALL DISTRIBUTOR (ACD): A switching system designed to
queue and/or distribute a large volume of incoming calls to a group
of attendants to the next available "answering" position.
AUTOMATIC DIALING UNIT: A device which automatically generates a
predetermined set of dialing digits.
AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF OUTWARD DIALING (AIOD): A computer
generated report showing all long distance calls placed over AT&T's
toll network.
AUTOMATIC NUMBER IDENTIFICATION (ANI): Automatic equipment at a
local dial office used on customer dialed calls to identify the
calling-station.
AUTOMATIC ROUTE SELECTION (ARS): Least cost routing via AT&T
CENTREX system.
- B -
BAND: (1) The range of frequencies between two defined limits. (2)
In reference to WATS, one of the five specific geographic areas as
defined by AT&T. Synonym: BANDWIDTH.
- 6 -
BANDWIDTH: See BAND.
BASEBAND: The total frequency band occupied by the aggregate of all
the voice and data signals used to modulate a radio carrier.
BAUD: A unit of signaling speed. The speed in baud is the number of
discrete conditions conditions or signal elements per second. If
each signal event represents only one bit condition, then Baud is
the same as bits per second. When each signal event represents
other than one bit, Baud does not equal bits per second.
BELL OPERATING COMPANY (BOC) /BELL SYSTEMS
OPERATING COMPANY (BSOC): Any of the 24 AT&T affiliated companies
providing local service.
BELL SYSTEM: The aggregate of AT&T's 24 associated telephone
companies, Long Lines, Western Electric, and Bell Labs.
BILLING NUMBER: The MCI term for the number which identifies a
customer on a billing location level, assigned to Network Service
Customer (by COMS). Assigned for each unique customer name and
billing location. For internal use only.
BINARY: A number system that uses only two characters ("0" and
"1"). BIT: A binary digit. The smallest unit of coded information.
BITS PER SECOND (BPS): The rate at which data transmission is
measured.
BLOCKED CALLS: Attempted calls that are not connected because (1)
all lines to the central offices are in use; or (2) all connecting
connecting paths through the PBX/switch are in use.
BLOCKED ANI: ANI prohibited from completing a call over the MCI
network.
BREAK: A means of interrupting transmission, a momentary
interruption of a circuit.
BROADBAND: A transmission facility having a bandwidth of greater
then 20 kHz.
BUS: A heavy conductor, or group of conductors, to which several
units of the same type of equipment may be connected.
BUSY: The condition in which facilities over which a call is to be
connected are already in use.
BUSY HOUR: The time of day when phone lines are most in demand.
- 7 -
BUSY TONE: A single that is interrupted at 60 ipm (impulses per
minute) rate to indicate that the terminal point of a call is
already in use.
BYTE: A group of binary digits that are processed by a computer as
a unit.
- C -
CARRIER: High frequency current that can be modulated with voice or
digital signals for bulk transmission via cable or radio circuits.
CARRIER SYSTEM: A system for providing several communications
channels over a single path.
CATHODE RAY TUBE (CRT): The "television-like" screen used to
display the output from a computer.
CELLULAR MOBILE RADIO: A system providing exchange telephone
service to a station located in an auto or other mobile vehicle,
using radio circuits to a base radio station which covers a
specific geographical area and as the vehicle moves from one area
to another, different base radio stations handle the call.
CENTRAL OFFICE (CO): A telephone switching center that provides
local access to the public network. Sometimes referred to as:
Class 5 office, end office, or Local Dial Office.
CENTREX, CO: PBX Service provided by a switch located at the
telephone company central office.
CENTREX, CU: A variation on Centrex CO provided by a telephone
company maintained "Central Office" type switch located at the
customer's premises.
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (CPU): The control unit within a computer
which handles all the intelligent functions of the systems. In a
telephone switch, directs all potions of the system to carry out
their appropriate functions. Synonym: Common Control.
CHANNEL: A communication path via a carrier or microwave radio.
CHARACTER: Any letter, digit, or special symbol. In data
transmission would be represented by a specific code made up of a
group of binary digits.
CIRCUIT: A path for the transmission of electromagnetic signals to
include all conditioning and signaling equipment. Synonym:
Facility
- 8 -
CIRCUIT SWITCHING: A switching system that completes a dedicated
transmission path from sender to receiver at the time of
transmission.
CLASS OF SERVICE/CLASS MARK (COS): A subgrouping of telephone
customers or users for the sake of rate distinction or limitation
of service.
COAXIAL CABLE: A cable having several coaxial lines under a single
protective sheath. Usually used as a high capacity carrier in urban
areas between interexchange and toll offices.
CODEC: Coder-Decoder. Used to convert analog signals to digital
form for transmission over a digital median and back again to the
original analog form.
COMMON CARRIER: A government regulated private company that
provides the general public with telecommunications services and
facilities.
COMMON CHANNEL INTEROFFICE SIGNALING (CCIS): A digital technology
used by AT&T to enhance their Integrated Services Digital Network.
It uses a separate data line to route interoffice signals to
provide faster call set-up and more efficient use of trunks.
COMMON CONTROL SWITCHING ARRANGEMENT (CCSA): An arrangement for
telecommunicationsnetworks in which common controlled switching
machines are used to route traffic over network routes and access
lines. The switching machine may be shared with other users
and is maintained by the telephone company.
COMPUTER PORT/TKI PORT: The interface through which the computer
connects to the communications circuit.
CONDITIONING EQUIPMENT: Equipment modifications or adjustments
necessary to match transmission levels and impedances and which
equalizes transmission and delay to bring circuit losses, levels,
and distortion within established standards.
CONFIGURATION: The combination of long-distance services and/or
equipment that make up a communications system.
CONTROL UNIT (CU): The central processor of a telephone switching
device.
CORPORATE ID NUMBER: The MCI term for the number which identifies
a customer on a corporate level. (Not all MCI customers have this).
COST COMPONENT: The price of each type of long distance service
and/or equipment that constitutes a configuration.
- 9 -
COST PER HOUR (CPH): Total cost of different services divided by
total holding time (in minutes).
CROSS CONNECTION: The wire connections running between terminals on
the two sides of a distribution frame, or between binding posts in
a terminal.
CROSS TALK: The unwanted energy (speech or tone) transferred from
one circuit to another circuit.
CUSTOMER OWNED AND MAINTAINED (COAM): Customer provided
communications apparatus, and their associated wiring.
CUSTOMER PREMISE EQUIPMENT (CPE): Telephone equipment, usually
including wiring located within the customer's part of a building.
CUT: To transfer a service from one facility to another.
CUT THROUGH: The establishment of a complete path for signaling
and/or audio communications.
- D -
DATA: Any representation, such as characters to which a meaning is
assigned.
DATA COMMUNICATIONS: The movement of coded information by means of
electronic transmission systems.
DATA SET: A device which converts data into signals suitable for
transmission over communications lines.
DATA TERMINAL: A station in a system capable of sending and/or
receiving data signals.
DECIBEL (db): A unit of measurement represented as a ratio of two
voltages, currents or powers and is used to measure transmission
loss or gain.
DELAY DIAL: A dialing configuration whereby local dial equipment
will wait until it receives the entire telephone number before
seizing a circuit to transmit the call.
DELTA MODULATION (DM): A variant of pulse code modulation whereby
a code representing the difference between the amplitude of a
sample and the amplitude of a previous one is sent. Operates well
in the presence of noise, but requires a wide frequency band.
DIAL LEVEL: The selection of stations or services associated with
a PBX using a one to four digit code (e.g., dialing 9 for access to
outside dial tone).
- 10 -
DIAL PULSING: The transmitting of telephone address signals by
momentarily opening a DC circuit a number of times corresponding to
the decimal digit which is dialed.
DIAL REPEATING TIE LINE/ DIAL REPEATING TIE TRUNK: A tie line which
permits direct station to station calling without use of the
attendant.
DIAL SELECTIVE SIGNALING: A multipoint network in which the called
party is selected by a prearranged dialing code.
DIAL TONE: A tone indicating that automatic switching equipment is
ready to receive dial signals.
DIALING PLAN: A description of the dialing arrangements for
customer use on a networks.
DIGITAL: Referring to the use of digits to formulate and solve
problems, or to encode information.
DIMENSION CUSTOM TELEPHONE SERVICE (DCTS): AT&T's electronically
programmable telephone station sets which use special buttons to
access PBX features.
DIRECT DISTANCE DIALING (DDD): A toll service that permits
customers to dial their own long distance call without the aid of
an operator.
DIRECT INWARD DIALING (DID): A PBX or CENTREX feature that allows
a customer outside the system to directly dial a station within the
system.
DIRECT OUTWARD DIALING: A PBX or CENTREX feature that allows a
station user to gain direct access to an exchange network.
DROP: That direction of a circuit which looks towards the local
operator.
DRY CIRCUIT: A circuit which transmits voice signals and carries no
direct current.
DUAL TONE MULTI-FREQUENCY (DTMF): Also know as Touch Tone. A type
of signaling which emits two distinct frequencies for each
indicated digit.
DUPLEX: Simultaneous two-way independent transmission.
DX SIGNALING: A long-range bidirectional signaling method using
paths derived from transmission cable pairs. It is based on a
balanced and symmetrical circuit that is identical at both ends.
This circuit presents an E&M lead interface to connecting circuits.
- 11 -
AT&T FORGERY: By - < Net Runner >
Here is a very simple way to either:
[1] Play an incredibly cruel and realistic joke on a phreaking
friend. -OR- [2] Provide yourself with everything you ever wanted
to be an AT&T person.
All you need to do is get your hands on some AT&T paper and/or
business cards. To do this you can either go down to your local
business office and swipe a few or call up somewhere like WATTS
INFORMATION and ask them to send you their information package.
They will send you: 1. A nice letter (with the AT&T logo
letterhead) saying "Here is the info." 2. A business card (again
with AT&T) saying who the sales representative is. 3. A very nice
color booklet telling you all about WATTS lines. 4. Various billing
information. (Discard as it is very worthless) Now take the piece
of AT&T paper and the AT&T business card down to your
local print/copy shop. Tell them to run you off several copies of
each, but to leave out whatever else is printed on the business
card/letter. If they refuse or ask why, take your precious
business elsewhere. (This should only cost you around $2.00 total)
Now take the copies home and either with your typewriter, MAC,
or Fontrix, add whatever name, address, telephone number, etc. you
like. (I would recommend just changing the name on the card and
using whatever information was on there earlier)
And there you have official AT&T letters and business cards. As
mentioned earlier, you can use them in several ways. Mail a nice
letter to someone you hate (on AT&T paper..hehehe) saying that AT&T
is onto them or something like that. (Be sure to use correct
English and spelling) (Also do not hand write the letter! Use a
typewriter! - Not Fontrix as AT&T doesn't use OLD ENGLISH or ASCII
BOLD when they type letters. Any IBM typewriter will do perfectly)
Another possible use (of many, I guess) is (if you are old enough
to look the part) to use the business card as some sort of fake id.
The last example of uses for the fake AT&T letters & b.cards is
mentioned in my textfile, BASIC RADIO CALLING. Briefly, send the
station a letter that reads:
WCAT - FM202: (Like my examples? Haha!)
(As you probably know, radio stations give away things by accepting
the 'x' call. (ie: The tenth caller through wins a pair of Van
Halen tickets) Sometimes they may ask a trivia question, but that's
your problem. Anyway, the letter continues:)
You basically say that they have become so popular that they are
getting too many calls at once from listeners trying to win
tickets. By asking them to call all at the same time is overloading
our systems.
- 12 -
We do, of course, have means of handling these sort of
matters, but it would require you sending us a schedule of when you
will be asking your listeners to call in. That way we would be
able to set our systems to handle the amount of callers you get at
peak times..(etc..etc..more BS..But you get the idea, right?)
Joseph Hakimout AT&T Telecommunications East Bumblefuck,
Nowheresville 55555 Ok, so it probably won't work (DJs just
aren't that dumb, unless you really do live in Nowheresville), but
using AT&T paper and a business card might up your chances some.
- 13 -
ELECTRONIC TOLL FRAUD DEVICES: by - < Doc Silicon >
THIS FILE IS DESIGNED TO IDENTIFY VARIOUS KINDS OF ETF
(ELECTRONIC TOLL FRAUD) DEVICES AND TO DESCRIBE THEIR OPERATION,
ACCORDING TO A BOOKLET PUT OUT BY BELL ENTITLED: THE INVESTIGATION
AND PROSECUTION OF ELECTRONIC TOLL FRAUD DEVICES. (FOR OFFICIAL USE
ONLY).
THERE ARE SEVERAL DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
WHICH MAY BE GENERALLY CLASSIFIED AS ETF DEVICES. THE MOST
SIGNIFICANT IS THE "BLUE BOX". THE CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH TYPE OF
DEVICE ARE DISCUSSED BELOW.
*BLUE BOX*
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
THE "BLUE BOX" WAS SO NAMED BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF THE FIRST ONE
FOUND. THEDESIGN AND HARDWARE USED IN THE BLUE BOX IS FAIRLY
SOPHISTICATED, AND ITS SIZE VARIES FROM A LARGE PIECE OF APPARATUS
TO A MINIATURIZED UNIT THAT IS APPROXIMATELY THE SIZE OF A "KING
SIZE" PACKAGE OF CIGARETTES. THE BLUE BOX CONTAINS 12 OR 13 BUTTONS
OR SWITCHES THAT EMIT MULTI-FREQUENCY TONES CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
TONES USED IN THE NORMAL OPERATION OF THE TELEPHONE TOLL (LONG
DISTANCE) SWITCHING NETWORK. THE BLUE BOX ENABLES ITS USER TO
ORIGINATE FRAUDULENT ("FREE") TOLL CALLS BY CIRCUMVENTING TOLL
BILLING EQUIPMENT. THE BLUE BOX MAY BE DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO A
PHONE LINE, OR IT MAY BE ACOUSTICALLY
COUPLED TO A TELEPHONE HANDSET BY PLACING THE BLUE BOX'S SPEAKER
NEXT TO THE TRANSMITTER OR THE TELEPHONE HANDSET. THE OPERATION OF
A BLUE BOX WILL BE DISCUSSED IN MORE DETAIL BELOW.
TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF A FRAUDULENT BLUE BOX CALL, IT IS
NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THE BASIC OPERATION OF THE DIRECT DISTANCE
DIALING (DDD) TELEPHONE NETWORK. WHEN A DDD CALL IS PROPERLY
ORIGINATED, THE CALLING NUMBER IS IDENTIFIED AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF
ESTABLISHING THE CONNECTION. THIS MAY BE DONE
EITHER AUTOMATICALLY OR, IN SOME CASES, BY AN OPERATOR ASKING THE
CALLING PARTY FOR HIS TELEPHONE NUMBER. THIS INFORMATION IS ENTERED
ON A TAPE IN THE AUTOMATIC MESSAGE ACCOUNTING (AMA) OFFICE. THIS
TAPE ALSO CONTAINS THE NUMBER ASSIGNED TO THE TRUNK LINE OVER WHICH
THE CALL IS TO BE SENT. THE INFORMATION RELATING TO THE CALL
CONTAINED ON THE TAPE INCLUDES: CALLED NUMBER, CALLING NUMBER, TIME
OF CALL. THE TIME OF DISCONNECT AT THE END OF THE CALL IS ALSO
RECORDED.
ALTHOUGH THE TAPE CONTAINS INFO WITH RESPECT TO MANY DIFFERENT
CALLS, THE VARIOUS DATA ENTRIES WITH RESPECT TO A SINGLE CALL ARE
EVENTUALLY CORRELATED TO PROVIDE BILLING INFO FOR USE BY YOUR
BELL'S ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT. THE TYPICAL BLUE BOX USER USUALLY
DIALS A NUMBER THAT WILL ROUTE THE CALL INTO THE TELEPHONE NETWORK
WITHOUT CHARGE. FOR EXAMPLE, THE USER WILL VERY OFTEN CALL A
WELL-KNOWN INWATS (TOLL-FREE) CUSTOMER'S NUMBER. THE BLUE BOX USER,
AFTER GAINING THIS ACCESS TO THE NETWORK AND,
- 14 -
IN EFFECT, "SEIZING" CONTROL AND COMPLETE DOMINION OVER THE LINE,
OPERATES A KEY ON THE BLUE BOX WHICH EMITS A 2600 HERTZ (CYCLES PER
SECOND) TONE. THIS TONE CAUSES THE SWITCHING EQUIPMENT TO RELEASE
THE CONNECTION TO THE INWATS CUSTOMER'S LINE. THE 2600HZ TONE IS A
SIGNAL THAT THE CALLING PARTY HAS HUNG UP. THE BLUE BOX SIMULATES
THIS CONDITION. HOWEVER, IN FACT THE LOCAL TRUNK ON THE
CALLING PARTY'S END IS STILL CONNECTED TO THE TOLL NETWORK. THE
BLUE BOX USER NOW OPERATES THE "KP" (KEY PULSE) KEY ON THE BLUE BOX
TO NOTIFY THE TOLL SWITCHING EQUIPMENT THAT SWITCHING SIGNALS ARE
ABOUT TO BE EMITTED. THE USER THEN PUSHES THE "NUMBER" BUTTONS ON
THE BLUE BOX CORRESPONDING TO THE TELEPHONE # BEING CALLED. AFTER
DOING SO HE/SHE OPERATES THE "ST" (START) KEY TO INDICATE TO THE
SWITCHING EQUIPMENT THAT SIGNALLING IS COMPLETE. IF THE CALL IS
COMPLETED, ONLY THE PORTION OF THE ORIGINAL CALL PRIOR TO THE EMISSION
OF 2600HZ TONE IS RECORDED ON THE AMA TAPE. THE TONES EMITTED BY THE
BLUE BOX ARE NOT RECORDED ON THE AMA TAPE. THEREFORE, BECAUSE THE
ORIGINAL CALL TO THE INWATS # IS TOLL-FREE, NO BILLING IS RENDERED
IN CONNECTION WITH THE CALL. ALTHOUGH THE ABOVE IS A DESCRIPTION OF
A TYPICAL BLUE BOX OPERATION USING A COMMON METHOD OF ENTRY INTO THE
NETWORK, THE OPERATION OF A BLUE BOX MAY VARY IN ANY ONE OR ALL OF
THE FOLLOWING RESPECTS: (A) THE BLUE BOX MAY INCLUDE A ROTARY DIAL
TO APPLY THE 2600HZ TONE AND THE SWITCHING SIGNALS. THIS TYPE OF BLUE
BOX IS CALLED A "DIAL PULSER" OR "ROTARY SF" BLUE BOX. (B) ENTRANCE
INTO THE DDD TOLL NETWORK MAY BE EFFECTED BY A PRETEXT CALL TO ANY
OTHER TOLL-FREE # SUCH AS UNIVERSAL DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE (555-1212)
OR ANY # IN THE INWATS NETWORK, EITHER INTER-STATE OR INTRA-STATE,
WORKING OR NON-WORKING. (C) ENTRANCE INTO THE DDD TOLL NETWORK MAY
ALSO BE IN THE FORM OF "SHORT HAUL" CALLING. A "SHORT HAUL" CALL IS
A CALL TO ANY # WHICH WILL RESULT IN A LESSER AMOUNT OF TOLL
CHARGES THAN THE CHARGES FOR THE CALL TO BE COMPLETED BY THE BLUE
BOX. FOR EXAMPLE, A CALL TO BIRMINGHAM FROM ATLANTA MAY COST $.80
FOR THE FIRST 3 MINUTES WHILE A CALL FROM ATLANTA TO LOS ANGELES IS
$1.85 FOR 3 MINUTES. THUS, A SHORT HAUL, 3-MINUTE CALL TO BIRMINGHAM
FROM ATLANTA, SWITCHED BY USE OF A BLUE BOX TO LOS ANGELES, WOULD
RESULT IN A NET FRAUD OF $2.65 FOR A 3 MINUTE CALL. (D) A BLUE BOX
MAY BE WIRED INTO THE TELEPHONE LINE OR ACOUSTICALLY CONNECTED TO THE
HANDSET. THE BLUE BOX MAY EVEN BE BUILT INSIDE A REGULAR TOUCH-TONE
PHONE, USING THE PHONE'S PUSH BUTTONS FOR THE BLUE BOX'S SIGNALLING
TONES. (E) A MAGNETIC TAPE RECORDING MAY BE USED TO RECORD THE BLUE
BOX TONES REPRESENTATIVE OF SPECIFIC PHONE #'S. SUCH A TAPE RECORDING
COULD BE USED IN LIEU OF A BLUE BOX TO FRAUDULENTLY PLACE CALLS TO THE
PHONE #'S RECORDED ON THE MAGNETIC TAPE.
ALL BLUE BOXES, EXCEPT "DIAL PULSE" OR "ROTARY SF" BLUE BOXES,
MUST HAVE THE FOLLOWING 4 COMMON OPERATING CAPABILITIES: (A)
IT MUST HAVE SIGNALLING CAPABILITY IN THE FORM OF A 2600HZ TONE.
THE TONE IS USED BY THE TOLL NETWORK TO INDICATE, EITHER BY
ITS PRESENCE OR ITS ABSENCE, AN "ON HOOK" (IDLE) OR "OFF HOOK"
(BUSY) CONDITION OF THE TRUNK. (B) THE BLUE BOX MUST HAVE A "KP"
- 15 -
TONES THAT UNLOCKS OR READIES THE MULTI-FREQUENCY RECEIVER AT THE
CALLED END TO RECEIVE THE TONES CORRESPONDING TO THE CALLED PHONE
#. (C) THE TYPICAL BLUE BOX MUST BE ABLE TO EMIT MF TONES WHICH ARE
USED TO TRANSMIT PHONE #'S OVER THE TOLL NETWORK. EACH DIGIT OF A
PHONE # IS REPRESENTED BY A COMBINATION OF 2 TONES. FOR EXAMPLE,
THE DIGIT 2 IS X-MITTED BY A COMBINATION OF 700HZ AND 1100HZ. (D)
THE BLUE BOX MUST HAVE AN "ST" KEY WHICH CONSISTS OF A COMBINATION
OF 2 TONES THAT TELL THE EQUIPMENT AT THE CALLED END THAT ALL
DIGITS HAVE BEEN SENT AND THAT THE EQUIPMENT SHOULD START SWITCHING
THE CALL TO THE CALLED NUMBER. THE "DIAL PULSER" OR "ROTARY SF"
BLUE BOX REQUIRES ONLY A DIAL WITH A SIGNALLING
CAPABILITY TO PRODUCE A 2600HZ TONE.
*BLACK BOX*
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
THIS ETF DEVICE IS SO-NAMED BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF THE FIRST
ONE FOUND. IT VARIES IN SIZE AND USUALLY HAS ONE OR TWO SWITCHES OR
BUTTONS. ATTACHED TO THE TELEPHONE LINE OF A CALLED PARTY, THE
BLACK BOX PROVIDES TOLL-FREE CALLING *TO* THAT PARTY'S LINE. A
BLACK BOX USER INFORMS OTHER PERSONS BEFOREHAND THAT THEY WILL NOT
BE CHARGED FOR ANY CALL PLACED TO HIM. THE USER THEN OPERATES THE
DEVICE CAUSING A "NON-CHARGE" CONDITION ("NO ANSWER" OR
"DISCONNECT") TO BE RECORDED ON THE TELEPHONE COMPANY'S BILLING
EQUIPMENT. A BLACK BOX IS RELATIVELY SIMPLE TO CONSTRUCT AND IS
MUCH LESS SOPHISTICATED THAN A BLUE BOX.
*CHEESE BOX*
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
ITS DESIGN MAY BE CRUDE OR VERY SOPHISTICATED. ITS SIZE VARIES;
ONE WAS FOUND THE SIZE OF A HALF-DOLLAR. A CHEESE BOX IS USED MOST
OFTEN BY BOOKMAKERS OR BETTERS TO PLACE WAGERS WITHOUT DETECTION
FROM A REMOTE LOCATION. THE DEVICE INTER-CONNECTS 2 PHONE LINES,
EACH HAVING DIFFERENT #'S BUT EACH TERMINATING AT THE SAME
LOCATION. IN EFFECT, THERE ARE 2 PHONES AT THE SAME LOCATION WHICH
ARE LINKED TOGETHER THROUGH A CHEESE BOX. IT IS
USUALLY FOUND IN AN UNOCCUPIED APARTMENT CONNECTED TO A PHONE JACK
OR CONNECTING BLOCK. THE BOOKMAKER, AT SOME REMOTE LOCATION, DIALS
ONE OF THE NUMBERS AND STAYS ON THE LINE. VARIOUS BETTORS DIAL THE
OTHER NUMBER BUT ARE AUTOMATICALLY CONNECTED WITH THE
BOOKMAKER BY MEANS OF THE CHEESE BOX INTER-CONNECTION. IF, IN
ADDITION TO A CHEESE BOX, A BLACK BOX IS INCLUDED IN THE
ARRANGEMENT, THE COMBINED EQUIPMENT WOULD PERMIT TOLL-FREE CALLING
ON EITHER LINE TO THE OTHER LINE. IF A POLICE RAID WERE CONDUCTED
AT THE TERMINATING POINT OF THE CONVERSATIONS. THE LOCATION OF THE
CHEESE BOX- THERE WOULD BE NO EVIDENCE OF GAMBLING ACTIVITY. THIS
DEVICE IS SOMETIMES DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY. LAW ENFORCEMENT
OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN ADVISED THAT WHEN UNUSUAL DEVICES ARE FOUND
ASSOCIATED WITH TELEPHONE CONNECTIONS THE PHONE COMPANY SECURITY
REPRESENTATIVES SHOULD BE CONTACTED TO ASSIST IN IDENTIFICATION.
(THIS PROBABLY WOULD BE GOOD FOR A BBS, ESPECIALLY WITH THE BLACK
BOX SET UP. AND IF YOU EVER
- 16 -
DECIDED TO TAKE THE BOARD DOWN, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR
PHONE #. IT ALSO MAKES IT SO YOU YOURSELF CANNOT BE TRACED. I AM
NOT SURE ABOUT CALLING OUT FROM ONE THOUGH)
*RED BOX*
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
THIS DEVICE IT COUPLED ACOUSTICALLY TO THE HANDSET TRANSMITTER OF
A SINGLE-SLOT COIN TELEPHONE. THE DEVICE EMITS SIGNALS IDENTICAL TO
THOSE TONES EMITTED WHEN COINS ARE DEPOSITED. THUS, LOCAL OR TOLL
CALLS MAY BE PLACED WITHOUT THE ACTUAL DEPOSIT OF COINS.
- 17 -
Secrets of the Little Blue Box: by Ron Rosenbaum
Printed in the October 1971 issue of Esquire Magazine. If you
happen to bein a library and come across a collection of Esquire
magazines, the October1971 issue is the first issue printed in the
smaller format. The storybegins on page 116 with a picture of a
blue box.
The Blue Box Is Introduced: Its Qualities Are Remarked I am in the
expensively furnished living room of Al Gilbertson (His real name
has been changed.), the creator of the "blue box." Gilbertson is
holding one of his shiny black-and-silver "blue boxes" comfortably
in the palm of his hand, pointing out the thirteen little red push
buttons sticking up from the console. He is dancing his fingers
over the buttons, tapping out iscordant beeping electronic jingles.
He is trying to explain to me how his little blue box does nothing
less than place the entire telephone system of the world, satellites,
cables and all, at the service of the blue-box operator, free of
charge. "That's what it does. Essentially it gives you the power of
a super operator. You seize a tandem with this top button," he presses
the top button with his index finger and the blue box emits ahigh-
pitched cheep, "and like that" -- cheep goes the blue box again --
"you control the phone company's long-distance switching systems
from your cute little Princes phone or any old pay phone. And you've
got anonymity. An operator has to operate from a definite location:
the phone company knows where she is and what she's doing. But with
your beeper box, once you hop onto a trunk, say from a Holiday Inn 800
(toll-free) number, they don't know where you are, or where you're
coming from, they don't know how you slipped into their lines and
popped up in that 800 Number. They don't even know anything illegal
is going on. And you can obscure your origins through as many levels
as you like. You can call next door by way of White Plains, then over
to Liverpool by cable, and then back here by satellite. You can call
yourself from one pay phone all the way around the world to a pay
phone next to you. And you get your dime back too." "And they
can't trace the calls? They can't charge you?" "Not if you do it
the right way. But you'll find that the free-call thing isn't
really as exciting at first as the feeling of power you get from
having one of these babies in your hand. I've watched people when
they first get hold of one of these things and start using it, and
discover they can make connections, set up crisscross and zigzag
switching patterns back and forth across the world. They hardly
talk to the people they finally reach. They say hello and start
thinking of what kind of call to make next. They go a little
crazy." He looks down at the neat little package in his palm. His
fingers are still dancing, tapping out beeper patterns. "I think
it's something to do with how small my models are. There are lots
of blue boxes around, but mine are the smallest and most
sophisticated electronically. I wish I could show you the
prototype we made for our big syndicate order." He sighs.
- 18 -
"We had this order for a thousand beeper boxes from a
syndicate front man in Las Vegas.
They use them to place bets coast to coast, keep lines open for
hours, all of which can get expensive if you have to pay. The deal
was a thousand blue boxes for $300 apiece. Before then we retailed
them for $1500 apiece, but $300,000 in one lump was hard to turn
down. We had a manufacturing deal worked out in the Philippines.
Everything ready to go.Anyway, the model I had ready for
limited mass production was small enough to fit inside a flip
top Marlboro box. It had flush touch panels for a keyboard,
rather than these unsightly buttons, sticking out. Looked just
like a tiny portable radio. In fact, I had designed it with a
tiny ransistor receiver to get one AM channel, so in case the law
became suspicious the owner could switch on the radio part, start
snapping his fingers, and no one could tell anything illegal was
going on. I thought of everything for this model -- I had it lined
with a band of thermite which could be ignited by radio signal
from a tiny button transmitter on your belt, so it could be burned
to ashes instantly in case of a bust. It was beautiful. A
beautiful little machine. You should have seen the faces on these
syndicate guys when they came back after trying it out. They'd
hold it in their palm like they never wanted to let it go, and
they'd say, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe it.' You
probably won't believe it until you try it." The Blue Box Is
Tested: Certain Connections Are Made About eleven o'clock two
nights later Fraser Lucey has a blue box in the palm of his left
hand and a phone in the palm of his right. He is standing inside
a phone booth next to an isolated shut-down motel off Highway 1.
I am standing outside the phone booth. Fraser likes to show off
his blue box for people. Until a few weeks ago when Pacific
Telephone made a few arrests in his city, Fraser Lucey liked to
bring his blue box (This particular blue box, like most blue
boxes, is not blue. Blue boxes have come to be called "blue boxes"
either because 1) The first blue box ever confiscated by phone-
company security men happened to be blue, or 2) To distinguish
them from "black boxes." Black boxes are devices, usually a
resistor in series, which, when attached to home phones, allow
all incoming calls to be made without charge to one's caller.)
to parties. It never failed: a few cheeps from his device and
Fraser became the center of attention at the very hippest of
gatherings, playing phone tricks and doing request numbers for
hours. He began to take orders for his manufacturer in Mexico.
He became a dealer. Fraser is cautious now about where he shows
off his blue box. But he never gets tired of playing with it.
"It's like the first time every time," he tells me. Fraser puts
a dime in the slot. He listens for a tone and holds the receiver
up to my ear. I hear the tone. Fraser begins describing, with a
certain practiced air, what he does while he does it. "I'm dialing
an 800 number now. Any 800 number will do. It's toll free. Tonight
I think I'll use the ----- (he names a well-know rent-a-car company)
800 number.
- 19 -
Listen, It's ringing. Here, you hear it? Now watch." He places
the blue box over the mouthpiece of the phone so that the one
silver and twelve black push buttons are facing up toward me. He
presses the silver button -- the one at the top -- and I hear that
high-pitched beep. "That's 2600 cycles per second to be exact,"
says Lucey. "Now, quick. listen." He shoves the earpiece at me.
The ringing has vanished. The line gives a slight hiccough, there
is a sharp buzz, and then nothing but soft white noise. "We're home
free now," Lucey tells me, taking back the phone and applying the
blue box to its mouthpiece once again. "We're up on a tandem, into
a long-lines trunk. Once you're up on a tandem, you can send
yourself anywhere you want to go." He decides to check out London
first. He chooses a certain pay phone located in Waterloo Station.
This particular pay phone is popular with the Phone-phreaks network
because there are usually people walking by at all hours who will
pick it up and talk for a while. He presses the lower left-hand
corner button which is marked "KP" on the face of the box. "That's
Key Pulse. It tells the tandem we're ready to give it instructions.
First I'll punch out KP 182 START, which will slide us into the
overseas sender in White Plains." I hear a neat clunk-cheep. "I
think we'll head over to England by satellite. Cable is actually
faster and the connection is somewhat better, but I like going by
satellite. So I just punch out KP Zero 44. The Zero is supposed
to guarantee a satellite connection and 44 is the country code for
England. Okay... we're there. In Liverpool actually. Now all I
have to do is punch out the London area code which is 1, and dial
up the pay phone. Here, listen, I've got a ring now." I hear
the soft quick purr-purr of a London ring. Then someone picks
up the phone. "Hello," says the London voice. "Hello. Who's
this?" Fraser asks. "Hello. There's actually nobody here. I just
picked this up while I was passing by. This is a public phone.
There's no one here to answer actually." "Hello. Don't hang up.
I'm calling from the United States." "Oh. What is the purpose of
the call? This is a public phone you know." "Oh. You know. To
check out, uh, to find out what's going on in London. How is it
there?" "Its five o'clock in the morning. It's raining now."
"Oh. Who are you?" The London passerby turns out to be an
R.A.F. enlistee on his way back to the base in Lincolnshire, with
a terrible hangover after a thirty-six-hour pass. He and Fraser
talk about the rain. They agree that it's nicer when it's not
raining. They say good-bye and Fraser hangs up. His dime
returnswith a nice clink. "Isn't that far out," he says grinning at
me. "London, like that." Fraser squeezes the little blue box
affectionately in his palm. "I told ya this thing is for real.
Listen, if you don't mind I'm gonna try this girl I know in Paris.
I usually give her a call around this time. It freaks her out.
This time I'll use the ------ (a different rent-a-car
company) 800 number and we'll go by overseas cable, 133; 33 is the
country code for France, the 1 sends you by cable. Okay, here we
go.... Oh damn. Busy. Who could she be talking to at this time?"
A state police car cruises slowly by the motel. The car does not
- 20 -
stop, but Fraser gets nervous. We hop back into his car and
drive ten miles in the opposite direction until we reach a
Texaco station locked up for the night. We pull up to a phone
booth by the tire pump. Fraser dashes inside and tries the Paris
number. It is busy again. "I don't understand who she could be
talking to. The circuits may be busy. It's too bad I haven't
learned how to tap into lines overseas with this thing yet." Fraser
begins to phreak around, as the phone phreaks sa. He dials a
leading nationwide charge card's 800 number and punches out the
tones that bring him the time recording in Sydney, Australia. He
beeps up the weather recording in Rome, in Italian of course. He
calls a friend in Boston and talks about a certain over-the-counter
stock they are into heavily. He finds the Paris number busy again.
He calls up "Dial a Disc" in London, and we listen to Double Barrel
by David and Ansil Collins, the number-one hit of the week in
London. He calls up a dealer of another sort and talks in code.
He calls up Joe Engressia, the original blind phone-phreak genius,
and pays his respects. There are other calls. Finally Fraser gets
through to his young lady in Paris. They both agree the circuits
must have been busy, and criticize the Paris telephone system. At
two-thirty in the morning Fraser hangs up, pockets his dime, and
drives off, steering with one hand, holding what he calls his
"lovely little blue box" in the other. You Can Call Long Distance
For Less Than You Think "You see, a few years ago the phone company
made one big mistake," Gilbertson explains two days later in his
apartment. "They were careless enough to let some technical
journal publish the actual frequencies used to create all their
multi-frequency tones. Just a theoretical article some Bell
Telephone Laboratories engineer was doing about switching theory,
and he listed the tones in passing. At ----- (a well-known
technical school) I had been fooling around with phones for several
years before I came across a copy of the journal in the engineering
library. I ran back to the lab and it took maybe twelve hours from
the time I saw that article to put together the first working blue
box. It was bigger and clumsier than this little baby, but it
worked." It's all there on public record in that technical journal
written mainly by Bell Lab people for other telephone engineers.
Or at least it was public. "Just try and get a copy of that issue
at some engineering-school library now. Bell has had them all
red-tagged and withdrawn from circulation," Gilbertson tells me.
"But it's too late. It's all public now. And once they became
public the technology needed to create your own beeper device is
within the range of any twelve-year-old kid, any twelve-year-old
blind kid as a matter of fact. And he can do it in less than the
twelve hours it took us. Blind kids do it all the time. They can't
build anything as precise and compact as my beeper box, but theirs
can do anything mine can do." "How?" "Okay. About twenty years ago
A.T.&T. made a multi-billion-dollar decision to operate its entire
long-distance switching system on twelve electronically generated
combinations of twelve master tones. Those are the tones you
- 21 -
sometimes hear in the background after you've dialed a
long-distance number. They decided to use some very simple tones --
the tone for each number is just two fixed single-frequency tones
played simultaneously to create a certain beat frequency. Like
1300 cycles per second and 900 cycles per second played together
give you the tone for digit 5. Now, what some of these phone
phreaks have done is get themselves access to an electric organ.
Any cheap family home-entertainment organ. Since the
frequencies are public knowledge now -- one blind phone phreak has
even had them recorded in one of the talking books for the blind --
they just have to find the musical notes on the organ which
correspond to the phone tones. Then they tape them. For instance,
to get Ma Bell's tone for the number 1, you press down organ keys
F~5 and A~5 (900 and 700 cycles per second) at the same time. To
produce the tone for 2 it's F~5 and C~6 (1100 and 700 c.p.s). The
phone phreaks circulate the whole list of notes so there's no trial
and error anymore." He shows me a list of the rest of the phone
numbers and the two electric organ keys that produce them.
"Actually, you have to record these notes at 3 3/4
inches-per-second tape speed and double it to 7 1/2
inches-per-second when you play them back, to get the proper
tones," he adds. "So once you have all the tones recorded, how do
you plug them into the phone system?" "Well, they take their organ
and their cassette recorder, and start banging out entire phone
numbers in tones on the organ, including country codes, routing
instructions, 'KP' and 'Start' tones. Or, if they don't have an
organ, someone in the phone-phreak network sends them a cassette
with all the tones recorded, with a voice saying 'Number one,' then
you have the tone, 'Number two,' then the tone and so on. So with
two cassette recorders they can put together a series of phone
numbers by switching back and forth from number to number. Any
idiot in the country with a cheap cassette recorder can make all
the free calls he wants." "You mean you just hold the cassette
recorder up the mouthpiece and switch in a series of beeps you've
recorded? The phone thinks that anything that makes these tones
must be its own equipment?" "Right. As long as you get the
frequency within thirty cycles per second of the phone company's
tones, the phone equipment thinks it hears its own voice talking to
it. The original granddaddy phone phreak was this blind kid with
perfect pitch, Joe Engressia, who used to whistle into the phone.
An operator could tell the difference between his whistle and the
phone company's electronic tone generator, but the phone company's
switching circuit can't tell them apart. The bigger the phone
company gets and the further away from human operators it gets, the
more vulnerable it becomes to all sorts of phone phreaking." A Guide
for the Perplexed "But wait a minute," I stop Gilbertson. "If
everything you do sounds like phone-company equipment, why doesn't
the phone company charge you for the call the way it charges its own
equipment?" "Okay. That's where the 2600-cycle tone comes in. I
better start from the beginning." The beginning he describes
for me is a vision of the phone system of the continent as thousands
- 22 -
of webs, of long-line trunks radiating from each of the hundreds of
toll switching offices to the other toll switching offices. Each
toll switching office is a hive compacted of thousands of long
distance tandems constantly whistling and beeping to tandems in
far-off toll switching offices. The tandem is the key to the whole
system. Each tandem is a line with some relays with the capability
of signalling any other tandem in any other toll switching office on
the continent, either directly one-to-one or by programming a
roundabout route through several other tandems if all the direct
routes are busy. For instance, if you want to call from New York
to Los Angeles and traffic is heavy on all direct trunks between the
two cities, your tandem in New York is programmed to try the next best
route, which may send you down to a tandem in New Orleans, then up to
San Francisco, or down to a New Orleans tandem, back to an Atlanta
tandem, over to an Albuquerque tandem and finally up to Los Angeles.
When a tandem is not being used, when it's sitting there waiting for
someone to make a long-distance call, it whistles. One side of the
tandem, the side "facing" your home phone, whistles at 2600 cycles
per second toward all the home phones serviced by the exchange,
telling them it is at their service, should they be interested in
making a long-distance call. The other side of the tandem is whistling
2600 c.p.s. into one or more long-distance trunk lines, telling the
rest of the phone system that it is neither sending nor receiving a
call through that trunk at the moment, that it has no use for that
trunk at the moment. "When you dial a long-distance number the first
thing that happens is that you are hooked into a tandem. A register
comes up to the side of the tandem facing away from you and presents
that side with the number you dialed. This sending side of the tandem
stops whistling 2600 into its trunk line. When a tandem stops the
2600 tone it has been sending through a trunk, the trunk is said to
be "seized," and is now ready to carry the number you have dialed
-- converted into multi-frequency beep tones -- to a tandem in the
area code and central office you want. Now when a blue-box operator
wants to make a call from New Orleans to New York he starts by
dialing the 800 number of a company which might happen to have its
headquarters in Los Angeles. The sending side of the New Orleans
tandem stops sending 2600 out over the trunk to the central office
in Los Angeles, thereby seizing the trunk. Your New Orleans tandem
begins sending beep tones to a tandem it has discovered idly whistling
2600 cycles in Los Angeles. The receiving end of that L.A. tandem
is seized, stops whistling 2600, listens to the beep tones which tell
it which L.A. phone to ring,and starts ringing the 800 number.
Meanwhile a mark made in the New Orleans office accounting tape notes
that a call from your New Orleans phone to the 800 number in L.A. has
been initiated and gives the call a code number. Everything is routine
so far. But then the phone phreak presses his blue box to the
mouthpiece and pushes the 2600-cycle button, sending 2600 out from the
New Orleans tandem to the L.A. tandem. The L.A. tandem notices 2600
- 23 -
cycles are coming over the line again and assumes that New Orleans
has hung up because the trunk is whistling as if idle. The L.A.
tandem immediately ceases ringing the L.A. 800 number. But as soon
as the phreak takes his finger off the 2600 button, the L.A. tandem
assumes the trunk is once again being used because the 2600 is gone,
so it listens for a new series of digit tones - to find out where it
must send the call. Thus the blue-box operator in New Orleans now is
in touch with a tandem in L.A. which is waiting like an obedient genie
to be told what to do next. The blue-box owner then beeps out the ten
digits of the New York number which tell the L.A. tandem to relay a call
to New York City. Which it promptly does. As soon as your party picks
up the phone in New York, the side of the New Orleans tandem facing
you stops sending 2600 cycles to you and stars carrying his voice to
you by way of the L.A. tandem. A notation is made on the accounting
tape that the connection has been made on the 800 call which had been
initiated and noted earlier. When you stop talking to New York a
notation is made that the 800 call has ended. At three the next
morning, when the phone company's accounting computer starts
reading back over the master accounting tape for the past day, it
records that a call of a certain length of time was made from your
New Orleans home to an L.A. 800 number and, of course, the accounting
computer has been trained to ignore those toll-free 800 calls when
compiling your monthly bill. "All they can prove is that you made an
800 toll-free call," Gilbertson the inventor concludes. "Of course,
if you're foolish enough to talk for two hours on an 800 call, and
they've installed one of their special anti-fraud computer programs to
watch out for such things, they may spot you and ask why you took two
hours talking to Army Recruiting's 800 number when you're 4-F. But if
you do it from a pay phone, they may discover something peculiar the
next day -- if they've got a blue-box hunting program in their computer
-- but you'll be a long time gone from the pay phone by then. Using
a pay phone is almost guaranteed safe." "What about the recent series
of blue-box arrests all across the country -- New York, Cleveland, and
so on?" I asked. "How were they caught so easily?" "From what I can
tell, they made one big mistake: they were seizing trunks using an
area code plus 555-1212 instead of an 800 number. Using 555 is easy to
detect because when you send multi-frequency beep tones of 555 you get
a charge for it on your tape and the accounting computer knows there's
something wrong when it tries to bill you for a two-hour call to Akron,
Ohio, information, and it drops a trouble card which goes right into the
hands of the security agent if they're looking for blue-box user.
"Whoever sold those guys their blue boxes didn't tell them how to
use them properly, which is fairly irresponsible. And they were fairly
stupid to use them at home all the time. "But what those arrests
really mean is than an awful lot of blue boxes are flooding into
the country and that people are finding them so easy to make that
they know how to make them before they know how to use them. Ma
Bell is in trouble." And if a blue-box operator or a
- 24 -
aassette-recorder phone phreak sticks to pay phones and 800
numbers, the phone company can't stop them? "Not unless they change
their entire nationwide long-lines technology, which will take them
a few billion dollars and twenty years. Right now they can't do a
thing. They're screwed."
Captain Crunch Demonstrates His Famous Unit
There is an underground telephone network in this country.
Gilbertson discovered it the very day news of his activities hit
the papers. That evening his phone began ringing. Phone phreaks
from Seattle, from Florida, from New York, from San Jose, and from
Los Angeles began calling him and telling him about the
phone-phreak network. He'd get a call from a phone phreak who'd
say nothing but, "Hang up and call this number." When he dialed
the number he'd find himself tied into a conference of a dozen
phone phreaks arranged through a quirky switching station in
British Columbia. They identified themselves as phone phreaks, they
demonstrated their homemade blue boxes which they called "M-Fers"
(for "multi-frequency," among other things) for him, they talked
shop about phone-phreak devices. They let him in on their secrets on
the theory that if the phone company was after him he must be
trustworthy. And, Gilbertson recalls, they stunned him with their
technical sophistication. I ask him how to get in touch with the
phone-phreak network. He digs around through a file of old schematics
and comes up with about a dozen numbers in three widely separated area
codes. "Those are the centers," he tells me. Alongside some of the
numbers he writes in first names or nicknames: names like Captain
Crunch, Dr. No, Frank Carson (also a code word for a free call),
Marty Freeman (code word for M-F device), Peter Perpendicular Pimple,
Alefnull, and The Cheshire Cat. He makes checks alongside the names
of those among these top twelve who are blind. There are five checks.
I ask him who this Captain Crunch person is. "Oh. The Captain. He's
probably the most legendary phone phreak. He calls himself Captain
Crunch after the notorious Cap'n Crunch 2600 whistle." (Several years
ago, Gilbertson explains, the makers of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal
offered a toy-whistle prize in every box as a treat for the Cap'n
Crunch set. Somehow a phone phreak discovered that the toy whistle
just happened to produce a perfect 2600-cycle tone. When the man who
calls himself Captain Crunch was transferred overseas to England with
his Air Force unit, he would receive scores of calls from his friends
and "mute" them -- make them free of charge to them -- by blowing his
Cap'n Crunch whistle into his end.) "Captain Crunch is one of the older
phone phreaks," Gilbertson tells me. "He's an engineer who once got
in a little trouble for fooling around with the phone, but he can't
stop. Well, they guy drives across country in a Volkswagen van
with an entire switchboard and a computerized super-sophisticated
M-F-er in the back. He'll pull up to a phone booth on a lonely
highway somewhere, snake a cable out of his bus, hook it onto the
phone and sit for hours, days sometimes, sending calls zipping back
- 25 -
and forth across the country, all over the world...." Back at my motel,
I dialed the number he gave me for "Captain Crunch" and asked for G----
T--, his real name, or at least the name he uses when he's not dashing
into a phone booth beeping out M-F tones faster than a speeding bullet
and zipping phantomlike through the phone company's long-distance
lines. When G---- T----- answered the phone and I told him I was
preparing a story for Esquire about phone phreaks, he became very
indignant. "I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if
I do it, I do it for one reason and one reason only. I'm learning
about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a
System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore
a system. Computers, systems, that's my bag. The phone company is
nothing but a computer." A tone of tightly restrained excitement
enters the Captain's voice when he starts talking about systems.
He begins to pronounce each syllable with the hushed deliberation of
an obscene caller. "Ma Bell is a system I want to explore. It's a
beautiful system, you know, but Ma Bell screwed up. It's terrible
because Ma Bell is such a beautiful system, but she screwed up. I
learned how she screwed up from a couple of blind kids who wanted me
to build a device. A certain device. They said it could make free
calls. I wasn't interested in free calls. But when these blind kids
told me I could make calls into a computer, my eyes lit up. I wanted
to learn about computers. I wanted to learn about Ma Bell's computers.
So I build the little device, but I built it wrong and Ma Bell found
out. Ma Bell can detect things like that. Ma Bell knows. So I'm
strictly rid of it now. I don't do it. Except for learning purposes."
He pauses. "So you want to write an article. Are you paying for this
call? Hang up and call this number." He gives me a number in a area
code a thousand miles away of his own. I dial the number. "Hello
again. This is Captain Crunch. You are speaking to me on a toll-free
loop-around in Portland, Oregon. Do you know what a toll-free loop
around is? I'll tell you. He explains to me that almost every exchange
in the country has open test numbers which allow other exchanges to
test their connections with it. Most of these numbers occur in
consecutive pairs, such as 302 956-0041 and 302 956-0042. Well,
certain phone phreaks discovered that if two people from anywhere in
the country dial the two consecutive numbers they can talk together
just as if one had called the other's number, with no charge to either
of them, of course. "Now our voice is looping around in a 4A switching
machine up there in Canada, zipping back down to me," the Captain tells
me. "My voice is looping around up there and back down to you. And
it can't ever cost anyone money. The phone phreaks and I have compiled
a list of many many of these numbers. You would be surprised if you
saw the list. I could show it to you. But I won't. I'm out of that
now. I'm not out to screw Ma Bell. I know better. If I do anything
it's for the pure knowledge of the System. You can learn to do
fantastic things. Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up?
Do you know the sound of tandems stacjinh and unstacking?
- 26 -
Give me your phone number. Okay. Hang up now and wait a minute."
Slightly less than a minute later the phone rang and the Captain was
on the line, his voice sounding far more excited, almost aroused.
"I wanted to show you what it's like to stack up tandems. To stack
up tandems." (Whenever the Captain says "stack up" it sounds as if he
is licking his lips.) "How do you like the connection you're on now?"
the Captain asks me. "It's a raw tandem. A raw tandem. Ain't nothin'
up to it but a tandem. Now I'm going to show you what it's like to
stack up. Blow off. Land in a far away place. To stack that tandem
up, whip back and forth across the country a few times, then shoot
on up to Moscow. "Listen," Captain Crunch continues. "Listen. I've
got line tie on my switchboard here, and I'm gonna let you hear me
stack and unstack tandems. Listen to this. It's gonna blow your mind.
" First I hear a super rapid-fire pulsing of the flutelike phone
tones, then a pause, then another popping burst of tones, then another,
then another. Each burst is followed by a beep-kachink sound. "We
have now stacked up four tandems," said Captain Crunch, sounding
somewhat remote. "That's four tandems stacked up. Do you know what
that means? That means I'm whipping back and forth, back and forth
twice, across the country, before coming to you. I've been known
to stack up twenty tandems at a time. Now, just like I said, I'm
going to shoot up to Moscow." There is a new, longer series of
beeper pulses over the line, a brief silence, then a ring. "Hello,"
answers a far-off voice. "Hello. Is this the American Embassy
Moscow?" "Yes, sir. Who is this calling?" says the voice. "Yes.
This is test board here in New York. We're calling to check out
the circuits, see what kind of lines you've got. Everything okay
there in Moscow?" "Okay?" "Well, yes, how are things there?" "Oh.
Well, everything okay, I guess." "Okay. Thank you." They hang up,
leaving a confused series of beep-kachink sounds hanging in
mid-ether in the wake of the call before dissolving away. The
Captain is pleased. "You believe me now, don't you? Do you know
what I'd like to do? I'd just like to call up your editor at
Esquire and show him just what it sounds like to stack and unstack
tandems. I'll give him a show that will blow his mind. What's his
number? I ask the Captain what kind of device he was using to
accomplish all his feats. The Captain is pleased at the question.
"You could tell it was special, couldn't you?" Ten pulses per
second. That's faster than the phone company's equipment. Believe
me, this unit is the most famous unit in the country. There is no
other unit like it. Believe me." "Yes, I've heard about it. Some
other phone phreaks have told me about it." "They have been referring
to my, ahem, unit? What is it they said? Just out of curiosity, did
they tell you it was a highly sophisticated computer-operated unit,
with acoustical coupling for receiving outputs and a switch-board
with multiple-line-tie capability? Did they tell you that the
frequency tolerance is guaranteed to be not more than .05 percent?
The amplitude tolerance less than .01 decibel? Those pulses you
heard were perfect. They just come faster than the phone company.
- 27 -
Those were high-precision op-amps. Op-amps are instrumentation
amplifiers designed for ultra-stable amplification, super-low
distortion and accurate frequency response. Did they tell you
it can operate in temperatures from -55 degrees C to +125 degrees
C?" I admit that they did not tell me all that. "I built it
myself," the Captain goes on. "If you were to go out and buy
the components from an industrial wholesaler it would cost you at
least $1500. I once worked for a semiconductor company and all
this didn't cost me a cent. Do you know what I mean? Did they
tell you about how I put a call completely around the world? I'll
tell you how I did it. I M-Fed Tokyo inward, who connected me to
India, India connected me to Greece, Greece connected me to
Pretoria, South Africa, South Africa connected me to South America,
I went from South America to London, I had a London operator connect
me to a New York operator, I had New York connect me to a California
operator who rang the phone next to me. Needless to say I had to
shout to hear myself. But the echo was far out. Fantastic.
Delayed. It was delayed twenty seconds, but I could hear myself
talk to myself." "You mean you were speaking into the mouthpiece of
one phone sending your voice around the world into your ear through
a phone on the other side of your head?" I asked the Captain. I had
a vision of something vaguely autoerotic going on, in a complex
electronic way. "That's right," said the Captain. "I've also sent
my voice around the
world one way, going east on one phone, and going west on the
other, going through cable one way, satellite the other, coming
back together at the same time, ringing the two phones
simultaneously and picking them up and whipping my voice both ways
around the world back to me. Wow. That was a mind blower." "You
mean you sit there with both phones on your ear and talk to
yourself around the world," I said incredulously. "Yeah. Um hum.
That's what I do. I connect the phone together and sit there and
talk." "What do you say? What do you say to yourself when you're
connected?" "Oh, you know. Hello test one two three," he says in
a low-pitched voice. "Hello test one two three," he replied to
himself in a high-pitched voice. "Hello test one two three," he
repeats again, low-pitched. "Hello test one two three," he replies,
high-pitched."I sometimes do this: Hello Hello Hello Hello, Hello,
hello," he trails off and breaks into laughter. Why Captain Crunch
Hardly Ever Taps Phones Anymore Using internal phone-company codes,
phone phreaks have learned a simple method for tapping phones.
Phone-company operators have in front of them a board that holds
verification jacks. It allows them to plug into conversations in
case of emergency, to listen in to a line to determine if the line
is busy or the circuits are busy. Phone phreaks have learned to
beep out the codes which lead them to a verification operator,
tell the verification operator they are switchmen from some other
area code testing out verification trunks. Once the operator hooks
them into the verification trunk, they disappear into the board for
all practical purposes, slip unnoticed into any one of the 10,000
to 100,000 numbers in that central office without the
- 28 -
verification operator knowing what they're doing, and of course
without the two parties to the connection knowing there is a
phantom listener present on their line. Toward the end of my
hour-long first conversation with him, I asked the Captain if he
ever tapped phones. "Oh no. I don't do that. I don't think it's
right," he told me firmly. "I have the power to do it but I
don't... Well one time, just one time, I have to admit that I did.
There was this girl, Linda, and I wanted to find out... you
know. I tried to call her up for a date. I had a date with her the
last weekend and I thought she liked me. I called her up, man, and
her line was busy, and I kept calling and it was still busy. Well,
I had just learned about this system of jumping into lines and I
said to myself, 'Hmmm. Why not just see if it works. It'll
surprise her if all of a sudden I should pop up on her line. It'll
impress her, if anything.' So I went ahead and did it. I M-Fed
into the line. My M-F-er is powerful enough when patched directly
into the mouthpiece to trigger a verification trunk without using
an operator the way the other phone phreaks have to. "I slipped
into the line and there she was talking to another boyfriend.
Making sweet talk to him. I didn't make a sound because I was so
disgusted. So I waited there for her to hang up, listening to her
making sweet talk to the other guy. You know. So as soon as she
hung up I instantly M-F-ed her up and all I said was, 'Linda, we're
through.' And I hung up. And it blew her head off. She couldn't
figure out what the hell happened. "But that was the only time. I
did it thinking I would surprise her, impress her. Those were all
my intentions were, and well, it really kind of hurt me pretty
badly, and... and ever since then I don't go into verification
trunks." Moments later my first conversation with the Captain comes
to a close. "Listen," he says, his spirits somewhat cheered,
"listen. What you are going to hear when I hang up is the sound of
tandems unstacking. Layer after layer of tandems unstacking until
there's nothing left of the stack, until it melts away into
nothing. Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep," he concludes, his voice
descending to a whisper with each cheep. He hangs up. The phone
suddenly goes into four spasms: kachink cheep. Kachink cheep
kachink cheep kachink cheep, and the complex connection has wiped
itself out like the Cheshire cat's smile. The MF Boogie Blues The
next number I choose from the select list of phone-phreak alumni,
prepared for me by the blue-box inventor, is a Memphis number. It
is the number of Joe Engressia, the first and still perhaps the
most accomplished blind phone phreak. Three years ago Engressia was
a nine-day wonder in newspapers and magazines all over America
because he had been discovered whistling free long-distance
connections for fellow students at the University of South Florida.
Engressia was born with perfect pitch: he could whistle phone tones
better than the phone-company's equipment. Engressia might have
gone on whistling in the dark for a few friends for the rest of his
life if the phone company hadn't decided to expose him. He was
warned, disciplined by the college, and the whole case became
public. In the months following media reports of his talent,
- 29 -
Engressia began receiving strange calls. There were calls from a
group of kids in Los Angeles who could do some very strange things
with the quirky General Telephone and Electronics circuitry in L.A.
suburbs. There were calls from a group of mostly blind kids in ----,
California, who had been doing some interesting experiments with
Cap'n Crunch whistles and test loops. There was a group in Seattle,
a group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few from New York, a few
scattered across the country. Some of them had already equipped
themselves with cassette and electronic M-F devices. For some of
these groups, it was the first time they knew of the others. The
exposure of Engressia was the catalyst that linked the separate
phone-phreak centers together. They all called Engressia. They
talked to him about what he was doing and what they were doing.
And then he told them -- the scattered regional centers and lonely
independent phone phreakers -- about each other, gave them each
other's numbers to call, and within a year the scattered phone-phreak
centers had grown into a nationwide underground. Joe Engressia is
only twenty-two years old now, but along the phone-phreak network
he is "the old man," accorded by phone phreaks something of the
reverence the phone company bestows on Alexander Graham Bell.
He seldom needs to make calls anymore. The phone phreaks all call
him and let him know what new tricks, new codes, new techniques
they have learned. Every night he sits like a sightless spider
in his little apartment receiving messages from every tendril of
his web. It is almost a point of pride with Joe that they call
him. But when I reached him in his Memphis apartment that night,
Joe Engressia was lonely, jumpy and upset. "God, I'm glad somebody
called. I don't know why tonight of all nights I don't get any
calls. This guy around here got drunk again tonight and
propositioned me again. I keep telling him we'll never see eye
to eye on this subject, if you know what I mean. I try to make
light of it, you know, but he doesn't get it. I can head him out
there getting drunker and I don't know what he'll do next. It's
just that I'm really all alone here, just moved to Memphis, it's
the first time I'm living on my own, and I'd hate for it to all
collapse now. But I won't go to bed with him. I'm just not very
interested in sex and even if I can't see him I know he's ugly.
"Did you hear that? That's him banging a bottle against the wall
outside. He's nice. Well forget about it. You're doing a story on
phone phreaks? Listen to this. It's the MF Boogie Blues. Sure
enough, a jumpy version of Muskrat Ramble boogies its way over the
line, each note one of those long-distance phone tones. The music
stops. A huge roaring voice blasts the phone off my ear: "AND THE
QUESTION IS..." roars the voice, "CAN A BLIND PERSON HOOK UP AN
AMPLIFIER ON HIS OWN?" The roar ceases. A high - pitched
operator-type voice replaces it. "This is Southern Braille Tel. &
Tel. Have tone, will phone." This is succeeded by a quick series
of M-F tones, a swift "kachink" and a deep eassuring voice: "If you
need home care, call the visiting-nurses association. First
National time in Honolulu is 4:32 p.m." Joe back in his jow voice
- 30 -
again: "Are we seeing eye to eye? 'Si, si,' said the blind Mexican.
Ahem. Yes. Would you like to know the weather in Tokyo?" This swift
manic sequence of phone-phreak vaudeville stunts and blind-boy jokes
manages to keep Joe's mind off his tormentor only as long as it lasts.
"The reason I'm in Memphis, the reason I have to depend on that
homosexual guy, is that this is the first time I've been able to live
on my own and make phone trips on my own. I've been banned from all
central offices around home in Florida, they knew me too well, and at
the University some of my fellow scholars were always harassing me
because I was on the dorm pay phone all the time and making fun of
me because of my fat ass, which of course I do have, it's my
physical fatness program, but I don't like to hear it every day,
and if I can't phone trip and I can't phone phreak, I can't imagine
what I'd do, I've been devoting three quarters of my life to it. "I
moved to Memphis because I wanted to be on my own as well as
because it has a Number 5 crossbar switching system and some
interesting little independent phone-company districts nearby and
so far they don't seem to know who I am so I can go on phone
tripping, and for me phone tripping is just as important as
phone phreaking." Phone tripping, Joe explains, begins with calling
up a central-office switch room. He tells the switchman in a
polite earnest voice that he's a blind college student interested
in telephones, and could he perhaps have a guided tour of the
switching station? Each step of the tour Joe likes to touch and
feel relays, caress switching circuits, switchboards,
crossbar arrangements. So when Joe Engressia phone phreaks he feels
his way through the circuitry of the country garden of forking
paths, he feels switches shift, relays shunt, crossbars swivel,
tandems engage and disengage even as he hears -- with perfect pitch
-- his M-F pulses make the entire Bell system dance to his tune.
Just one month ago Joe took all his savings out of
his bank and left home, over the emotional protests of his mother.
"I ran away from home almost," he likes to say. Joe found a small
apartment house on Union Avenue and began making phone trips. He'd
take a bus a hundred miles south in Mississippi to see some
old-fashioned Bell equipment still in use in several states, which
had been puzzling. He'd take a bus three hundred miles to Charlotte,
North Carolina, to look at some brand-new experimental equipment.
He hired a taxi to drive him twelve miles to a suburb to tour the
office of a small phone company with some interesting idiosyncrasies
in its routing system. He was having the time of his life, he said,
the most freedom and pleasure he had known. In that month he had done
very little long-distance phone phreaking from his own phone. He had
begun to apply for a job with the phone company, he told me, and he
wanted to stay away from anything illegal. "Any kind of job will do,
anything as menial as the most lowly operator. That's probably all
they'd give me because I'm blind. Even though I probably know more
than most switchmen. But that's okay. I want to work for Ma Bell.
I don't hate Ma Bell the way Gilbertson and some phone phreaks do.
I don't want to screw Ma Bell. With me it's the pleasure of pure
- 31 -
knowledge. There's something beautiful about the system when you
know it intimately the way I do. But I don't know how much they
know about me here. I have a very intuitive feel for the condition
of the line I'm on, and I think they're monitoring me off and on
lately, but I haven't been doing much illegal. I have to make a
few calls to switchmen once in a while which aren't strictly legal,
and once I took an acid trip and was having these auditory
hallucinations as if I were trapped and these planes were dive
bombing me, and all of sudden I had to phone phreak out of there.
For some reason I had to call Kansas City, but that's all." A Warning
Is Delivered At this point -- one o'clock in my time zone -- a loud
knock on my motel - room door interrupts our conversation. Outside
the door I find a uniformed security guard who informs me that there
has been an "emergency phone call" for me while I have been on the
line and that the front desk has sent him up to let me know. Two seconds
after I say good-bye to Joe and hang up, the phone rings. "Who were
you talking to?" the agitated voice demands. The voice belongs to
Captain Crunch. "I called because I decided to warn you of
something. I decided to warn you to be careful. I don't want this
information you get to get to the radical underground. I don't
want it to get into the wrong hands. What would you say if I told
you it's possible for three phone phreaks to saturate the phone
system of the nation. Saturate it. Busy it out. All of it. I
know how to do this. I'm not gonna tell. A friend of mine has
already saturated the trunks between Seattle and New York. He did
it with a computerized M-F-er hitched into a special Manitoba
exchange. But there are other, easier ways to do it." Just three
people? I ask. How is that possible? "Have you ever heard of the
long-lines guard frequency? Do you know about stacking tandems
with 17 and 2600? Well, I'd advise you to find out about it. I'm
not gonna tell you. But whatever you do, don't let this get into
the hands of the radical underground." (Later Gilbertson, the
inventor, confessed that while he had always been skeptical about
the Captain's claim of the sabotage potential of trunk-tying phone
phreaks, he had recently heard certain demonstrations which
convinced him the Captain was not speaking idly. "I think it might
take more than three people, depending on how many machines like
Captain Crunch's were available. But even though the Captain sounds
a little weird, he generally turns out to know what he's talking
about.") "You know," Captain Crunch continues in his admonitory tone,
"you know the younger phone phreaks call Moscow all the time.
Suppose everybody were to call Moscow. I'm no right-winger. But
I value my life. I don't want the Commies coming over and dropping a
bomb on my head. That's why I say you've got to be careful about who
gets this information." The Captain suddenly shifts into a diatribe
against those phone phreaks who don't like the phone company. "They
don't understand, but Ma Bell knows everything they do. Ma Bell knows.
Listen, is this line hot? I just heard someone tap in. I'm not
paranoid, but I can detect things like that. Well, even if it is,
they know that I know that they know that I have a bulk eraser.
- 32 -
I'm very clean." The Captain pauses, evidently torn between wanting
to prove to the phone-company monitors that he does nothing illegal,
and the desire to impress Ma Bell with his prowess. "Ma Bell knows
how good I am. And I am quite good. I can detect reversals, tandem
switching, everything that goes on on a line. I have relative pitch
now. Do you know what that means? My ears are a $20,000 piece of
equipment. With my ears I can detect things they can't hear with
their equipment. I've had employment problems. I've lost jobs.
But I want to show Ma Bell how good I am. I don't want to screw her,
I want to work for her. I want to do good for her. I want to help
her get rid of her flaws and become perfect. That's my number-one
goal in life now." The Captain concludes his warnings and tells me
he has to be going. "I've got a little action lined up for tonight,"
he explains and hangs up. Before I hang up for the night, I call Joe
Engressia back. He reports that his tormentor has finally gone to
sleep -- "He's not blind drunk, that's the way I get, ahem, yes;
but you might say he's in a drunken stupor." I make a date to
visit Joe in Memphis in two days.
A Phone Phreak Call Takes Care of Business
The next morning I attend a gathering of four phone phreaks in
----- (a California suburb). The gathering takes place in a
comfortable split-level home in an upper-middle-class subdivision.
Heaped on the kitchen table are the portable cassette recorders,
M-F cassettes, phone patches, and line ties of the four phone
phreaks present. On the kitchen counter next to the telephone is
a shoe-box-size blue box with thirteen large toggle switches for
the tones. The parents of the host phone phreak, Ralph, who is
blind, stay in the living room with their sighted children. They
are not sure exactly what Ralph and his friends do with the phone
or if it's strictly legal, but he is blind and they are pleased he
has a hobby which keeps him busy. The group has been working at
reestablishing the historic "2111" conference, reopening some
toll-free loops, and trying to discover the dimensions of what seem
to be new initiatives against phone phreaks by phone-company
security agents. It is not long before I get a chance to see, to
hear, Randy at work. Randy is known among the phone phreaks as
perhaps the finest con man in the game. Randy is blind. He is
pale, soft and pear-shaped, he wears baggy pants and a wrinkly
nylon white sport shirt, pushes his head forward from hunched
shoulders somewhat like a turtle inching out of its shell. His
eyes wander, crossing and recrossing, and his forehead is somewhat
pimply. He is only sixteen years old. But when Randy starts
speaking into a telephone mouthpiece his voice becomes so
stunningly authoritative it is necessary to look again to convince
yourself it comes from a chubby adolescent Randy. Imagine the voice
of a crack oil-rig foreman, a tough, sharp, weather-beaten Marlboro
man of forty. Imagine the voice of a brilliant performance-fund
- 33 -
gunslinger explaining how he beats the Dow Jones by thirty percent.
Then imagine a voice that could make those two sound like Stepin
Fetchit. That is sixteen-year-old Randy's voice. He is speaking to
a switchman in Detroit. The phone company in Detroit had closed up
two toll-free loop pairs for no apparent reason, although heavy use
by phone phreaks all over the country may have been detected.
Randy is telling the switchman how to open up the loop and make it
free again: "How are you, buddy. Yeah. I'm on the board in here in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we've been trying to run some tests on your
loop-arounds and we find'em busied out on both sides.... Yeah,
we've been getting a 'BY' on them, what d'ya say, can you drop
cards on 'em? Do you have 08 on your number group? Oh that's
okay, we've had this trouble before, we may have to go after the
circuit. Here lemme give 'em to you: your frame is 05, vertical
group 03, horizontal 5, vertical file 3. Yeah, we'll hang on
here.... Okay, found it? Good. Right, yeah, we'd like to clear
that busy out. Right. All you have to do is look for your key on
the mounting plate, it's in your miscellaneous trunk frame. Okay?
Right. Now pull your key from NOR over the LCT. Yeah. I don't
know why that happened, but we've been having trouble with that
one. Okay. Thanks a lot fella. Be seein' ya." Randy hangs up,
reports that the switchman was a little inexperienced with the
loop-around circuits on the miscellaneous trunk frame, but that the
loop has been returned to its free-call status. Delighted, phone
phreak Ed returns the pair of numbers to the active-status column
in his directory. Ed is a superb and painstaking researcher.
With almost Talmudic thoroughness he will trace tendrils of hints
through soft-wired mazes of intervening phone-company circuitry back
through complex linkages of switching relays to find the location
and identity of just one toll-free loop. He spends hours and hours,
every day, doing this sort of thing. He has somehow compiled a
directory of eight hundred "Band-six in-WATS numbers" located in
over forty states. Band-six in-WATS numbers are the big 800
numbers -- the ones that can be dialed into free from anywhere in
the country. Ed the researcher, a nineteen-year-old engineering
student, is also a superb technician. He put together his own
working blue box from scratch at age seventeen. (He is sighted.)
This evening after distributing the latest issue of his in-WATS
directory (which has been typed into Braille for the blind phone
phreaks), he announces he has made a major new breakthrough: "I
finally tested it and it works, perfectly. I've got this switching
matrix which converts any touch-tone phone into an M-F-er." The
tones you hear in touch-tone phones are not the M-F tones that
operate the long-distance switching system. Phone phreaks believe
A.T.&T. had deliberately equipped touch tones with a different set
of frequencies to avoid putting the six master M-F tones in the
hands of every touch-tone owner. Ed's complex switching matrix
puts the six master tones, in effect put a blue box, in the hands
of every touch-tone owner. Ed shows me pages of schematics,
specifications and parts lists. "It's not easy to build, but
everything here is in the Heathkit catalog."
- 34 -
Ed asks Ralph what progress he has made in his attempts to
reestablish a long-term open conference line for phone phreaks.
The last big conference -- the historic "2111" conference -- had
been arranged through an unused Telex test-board trunk somewhere in
the innards of a 4A switching machine in Vancouver, Canada. For
months phone phreaks could M-F their way into Vancouver, beep out
604 (the Vancouver area code) and then beep out 2111 (the internal
phone-company code for Telex testing), and find themselves at any
time, day or night, on an open wire talking with an array of phone
phreaks from coast to coast, operators from Bermuda, Tokyo and
London who are phone - phreak sympathizers, and miscellaneous
guests and technical experts. The conference was a massive
exchange of information. Phone phreaks picked each other's brains
clean, then developed new ways to pick the phone company's brains
clean. Ralph gave M F Boogies concerts with his
home-entertainment-type electric organ, Captain Crunch demonstrated
his round-the-world prowess with his notorious computerized unit
and dropped leering hints of the "action" he was getting with his
girl friends. (The Captain lives out or pretends to live out
several kinds of fantasies to the gossipy delight of the blind
phone phreaks who urge him on to further triumphs on behalf of all
of them.) The somewhat rowdy Northwest phone-phreak crowd let
their bitter internal feud spill over into the peaceable conference
line, escalating shortly into guerrilla warfare; Carl the East
Coast international tone relations expert demonstrated newly opened
direct M-F routes to central offices on the island of Bahrein in
the Persian Gulf, introduced a new phone-phreak friend of his in
Pretoria, and explained the technical operation of the new
Oakland-to Vietnam linkages. (Many phone phreaks pick up spending
money by M-F-ing calls from relatives to Vietnam G.I.'s, charging
$5 for a whole hour of trans-Pacific conversation.) Day and night
the conference line was never dead. Blind phone phreaks all over
the country, lonely and isolated in homes filled with active
sighted brothers and sisters, or trapped with slow and
unimaginative blind kids in straitjacket schools for the blind,
knew that no matter how late it got they could dial up the
conference and find instant electronic communion with two or three
other blind kids awake over on the other side of America. Talking
together on a phone hookup, the blind phone phreaks say, is not
much different from being there together. Physically, there was
nothing more than a two-inch-square wafer of titanium inside a vast
machine on Vancouver Island. For the blind kids >there< meant an
exhilarating feeling of being in touch, through a kind of skill and
magic which was peculiarly their own. Last April 1, however, the
long Vancouver Conference was shut off. The phone phreaks knew it
was coming. Vancouver was in the process of converting from a
step-by-step system to a 4A machine and the 2111 Telex circuit was
to be wiped out in the process. The phone phreaks learned the
actual day on which the conference would be erased about a week
ahead of time over the phone company's internal - news - and -
shop- talk recording. For the next frantic seven days every phone
- 35 -
phreak in America was on and off the 2111 conference twenty-four
hours a day. Phone phreaks who were just learning the game or
didn't have M-F capability were boosted up to the conference by
more experienced phreaks so they could get a glimpse of what it
was like before it disappeared. Top phone phreaks searched
distant area codes for new conference possibilities without success.
Finally in the early morning of April 1, the end came. "I could feel
it coming a couple hours before midnight," Ralph remembers. "You
could feel something going on in the lines. Some static began
showing up, then some whistling wheezing sound. Then there were
breaks. Some people got cut off and called right back in, but
after a while some people were finding they were cut off and
couldn't get back in at all. It was terrible. I lost it about
one a.m., but managed to slip in again and stay on until the thing
died... I think it was about four in the morning. There were four
of us still hanging on when the conference disappeared into nowhere
for good. We all tried to M-F up to it again of course, but we got
silent termination. There was nothing there. " The Legendary Mark
Bernay Turns Out To Be "The Midnight Skulker" Mark Bernay. I had
come across that name before. It was on Gilbertson's select list of
phone phreaks. The California phone phreaks had spoken of a
mysterious Mark Bernay as perhaps the first and oldest phone
phreak on the West Coast. And in fact almost every phone phreak in
the West can trace his origins either directly to Mark Bernay or to
a disciple of Mark Bernay. It seems that five years ago this Mark
Bernay (a pseudonym he chose for himself) began traveling up and
down the West Coast pasting tiny stickers in phone books all along
his way. The stickers read something like "Want to hear an
interesting tape recording? Call these numbers." The numbers that
followed were toll-free loop-around pairs. When cone of the curious
called one of the numbers he would hear a tape recording pre-hooked
into the loop by Bernay which explained the use of loop-around pairs,
gave the numbers of several more, and ended by telling the caller,
"At six o'clock tonight this recording will stop and you and your
friends can try it out. Have fun." "I was disappointed by the
response at first," Bernay told me, when I finally reached him at
one of his many numbers and he had dispensed with the usual "I never
do anything illegal" formalities which experienced phone phreaks open
most conversations. "I went all over the coast with these stickers
not only on pay phones, but I'd throw them in front of high schools
in the middle of the night, I'd leave them unobtrusively in candy
stores, scatter them on main streets of small towns. At first hardly
anyone bothered to try it out. I would listen in for hours and hours
after six o'clock and no one came on. I couldn't figure out why people
wouldn't be interested. Finally these two girls in Oregon tried it
out and told all their friends and suddenly it began to spread."
Before his Johny Appleseed trip Bernay had already gathered a sizable
group of early pre-blue-box phone phreaks together on loop - arounds
in Los Angeles. Bernay does not claim credit for the original
- 36 -
discovery of the loop-around numbers. He attributes the
discovery to an eighteen-year-old reform school kid in Long Beach
whose name he forgets and who, he says, "just disappeared one day."
When Bernay himself discovered loop-arounds independently, from
clues in his readings in old issues of the Automatic Electric
Technical Journal, he found dozens of the reform-school kid's
friends already using them. However, it was one of Bernay's
disciples in Seattle that introduced phone phreaking to blind kids.
The Seattle kid who learned about loops through Bernay's recording
told a blind friend, the blind kid taught the secret to his friends
at a winter camp for blind kids in Los Angeles. When the camp
session was over these kids took the secret back to towns all over
the West. This is how the original blind kids became phone
phreaks. For them, for most phone phreaks in general, it was the
discovery of the possibilities of loop-arounds which led them on to
far more serious and sophisticated hone-phreak methods, and which
gave them a medium for sharing their discoveries. A year later a
blind kid who moved back east brought the technique to a blind
kids' summer camp in Vermont, which spread it along the East Coast.
All from a Mark Bernay sticker. Bernay, who is nearly thirty years
old now, got his start when he was fifteen and his family moved
into an L.A. suburb serviced by General Telephone and Electronics
equipment. He became fascinated with the differences between Bell
and G.T.&E. equipment. He learned he could make interesting things
happen by carefully timed clicks with the disengage button. He
learned to interpret subtle differences in the array of clicks,
whirrs and kachinks he could hear on his lines. He learned he
could shift himself around the switching relays of the L.A. area
code in a not-too-predictable fashion by interspersing his own
hook-switch clicks with the clicks within the line. (Independent
phone companies -- there are nineteen hundred of them still left,
most of them tiny island principalities in Ma Bell's vast empire --
have always been favorites with phone phreaks, first as learning
tools, then as Archimedes platforms from which to manipulate the
huge Bell system. A phone phreak in Bell territory will often M-F
himself into an independent's switching system, with switching
idiosyncrasies which can give him marvelous leverage over the Bell
System. "I have a real affection for Automatic Electric Equipment,"
Bernay told me. "There are a lot of things you can play with.
Things break down in interesting ways." Shortly after Bernay
graduated from college (with a double major in chemistry and
philosophy), he graduated from phreaking around with G.T.&E. to the
Bell System itself, and made his legendary sticker-pasting journey
north along the coast, settling finally in Northwest Pacific Bell
territory. He discovered that if Bell does not break down as
interestingly as G.T.&E., it nevertheless offers a lot of "things
to play with." Bernay learned to play with blue boxes. He
established his own personal switchboard and phone-phreak research
laboratory complex. He continued his phone-phreak evangelism with
ongoing sticker campaigns. He set up two recording numbers, one
- 37 -
with instructions for beginning phone phreaks, the other with latest
news and technical developments (along with some advanced
instruction) gathered from sources all over the country. These
days, Bernay told me, he had gone beyond phone-phreaking itself.
"Lately I've been enjoying playing with computers more than playing
with phones. My personal thing in computers is just like with
phones, I guess -- the kick is in finding out how to beat the
system, how to get at things I'm not supposed to know about, how to
do things with the system that I'm not supposed to be able to do."
As a matter of fact, Bernay told me, he had just been fired from
his computer-programming job for doing things he was not supposed
to be able to do. he had been working with a huge time-sharing
computer owned by a large corporation but shared by many others.
Access to the computer was limited to those programmers and
corporations that had been assigned certain passwords. And each
password restricted its user to access to only the one section of
the computer cordoned off from its own information storager. The
password system prevented companies and individuals from stealing
each other's information. "I figured out how to write a program
that would let me read everyone else's password," Bernay reports.
"I began playing around with passwords. I began letting the people
who used the computer know, in subtle ways, that I knew their
passwords. I began dropping notes to the computer supervisors with
hints that I knew what I know. I signed them 'The Midnight
Skulker.' I kept getting cleverer and cleverer with my messages
and devising ways of showing them what I could do. I'm sure they
couldn't imagine I could do the things I was showing them. But
they never responded to me. Every once in a while they'd change
the passwords, but I found out how to discover what the new ones
were, and I let them know. But they never responded directly to
the Midnight Skulker. I even finally designed a program which they
could use to prevent my program from finding out what it did. In
effect I told them how to wipe me out, The Midnight Skulker. It
was a very clever program. I started leaving clues about myself.
I wanted them to try and use it and then try to come up with something
to get around that and reappear again. But they wouldn't play. I
wanted to get caught. I mean I didn't want to get caught personally,
but I wanted them to notice me and admit that they noticed me. I
wanted them to attempt to respond, maybe in some interesting way."
Finally the computer managers became concerned enough about the threat
of information-stealing to respond. However, instead of using The
Midnight Skulker's own elegant self-destruct program, they called
in their security personnel, interrogated everyone, found an
informer to identify Bernay as The Midnight Skulker, and fired him.
"At first the security people advised the company to hire me
full-time to search out other flaws and discover other computer
freaks. I might have liked that. But I probably would have turned
into a double double agent rather than the double agent they
wanted. I might have resurrected The Midnight Skulker and tried
to catch myself. Who knows? Anyway, the higher-ups turned the
whole idea down."
- 38 -
You Can Tap the F.B.I.'s Crime Control Computer in the Comfort of
Your Own Home, Perhaps Computer freaking may be the wave of the
future. It suits the phone-phreak sensibility perfectly.
Gilbertson, the blue-box inventor and a lifelong phone phreak, has
also gone on from phone-phreaking to computer-freaking. Before he
got into the blue-box business Gilbertson, who is a highly skilled
programmer, devised programs for international currency arbitrage.
But he began playing with computers in earnest when he learned he
could use his blue box in tandem with the computer terminal
installed in his apartment by the instrumentation firm he worked
for. The print-out terminal and keyboard was equipped with
acoustical coupling, so that by coupling his little ivory Princess
phone to the terminal and then coupling his blue box on that, he
could M-F his way into other computers with complete anonymity, and
without charge; program and re-program them at will; feed them
false or misleading information; tap and steal from them. He
explained to me that he taps computers by busying out all the
lines, then going into a verification trunk, listening into the
passwords and instructions one of the time sharers uses, and them
M-F-ing in and imitating them. He believes it would not be
impossible to creep into the F.B.I's crime control computer through
a local police computer terminal and phreak around with the
F.B.I.'s memory banks. He claims he has succeeded in
re-programming a certain huge institutional computer in such a way
that it has cordoned off an entire section of its circuitry for his
personal use, and at the same time conceals that arrangement from
anyone else's notice. I have been unable to verify this claim.
Like Captain Crunch, like Alexander Graham Bell (pseudonym of a
disgruntled-looking East Coast engineer who claims to have invented
the black box and now sells black and blue boxes to gamblers and
radical heavies), like most phone phreaks, Gilbertson began his
career trying to rip off pay phones as a teenager. Figure them
out, then rip them off. Getting his dime back from the pay phone is
the phone phreak's first thrilling rite of passage. After learning
the usual eighteen different ways of getting his dime back,
Gilbertson learned how to make master keys to coin-phone cash boxes,
and get everyone else's dimes back. He stole some phone-company
quipment and put together his own home switchboard with it. He
learned to make a simple "bread-box" device, of the kind used by
bookies in the Thirties (bookie gives a number to his betting
clients; the phone with that number is installed in some widow
lady's apartment, but is rigged to ring in the bookie's shop
across town, cops trace big betting number and find nothing but
the widow). Not long after that afternoon in 1968 when, deep in
the stacks of an engineering library, he came across a technical
journal with the phone tone frequencies and rushed off to make his
first blue box, not long after that Gilbertson abandoned a very
promising career in physical chemistry and began selling blue boxes
for $1,500 apiece. "I had to leave physical chemistry. I just ran
out of interesting things to learn," he told me one evening.
We had been talking in the apartment of the man who served as the
- 39 -
link between Gilbertson and the syndicate in arranging the big
$300,000 blue-box deal which fell through because of legal
trouble. There has been some smoking. "No more interesting
things to learn," he continues. "Physical chemistry turns out
to be a sick subject when you take it to its highest level. I
don't know. I don't think I could explain to you how it's sick.
You have to be there. But you get, I don't know, a false feeling
of omnipotence. I suppose it's like phone-phreaking that way.
This huge thing is there. This whole system. And there are holes
in it and you slip into them like Alice and you're pretending
you're doing something you're actually not, or at least it's no
longer you that's doing what you thought you were doing. It's
all Lewis Carroll. Physical chemistry and phone-phreaking. That's
why you have these phone- phreak pseudonyms like The Cheshire Cat,
the Red King, and The Snark. But there's something about phone-
phreaking that you don't find in physical chemistry." He looks up
at me: "Did you ever steal anything?" "Well yes, I..." "Then you
know! You know the rush you get. It's not just knowledge, like
physical chemistry. It's forbidden knowledge. You know. You can
learn about anything under the sun and be bored to death with it. But
the idea that it's illegal. Look: you can be small and mobile and
smart and you're ripping off somebody large and powerful and very
dangerous." People like Gilbertson and Alexander Graham Bell are
always talking about ripping off the phone company and crewing Ma
Bell. But if they were shown a single button and told that by
pushing it they could turn the entire circuitry of AT&T. into
molten puddles, they probably wouldn't push it. The
disgruntled-inventor phone phreak needs the phone system the way
the lapsed Catholic needs the Church, the way Satan needs a God,
the way The Midnight Skulker needed, more than anything else,
response. Later that evening Gilbertson finished telling me how
delighted he was at the flood of blue boxes spreading throughout
the country, how delighted he was to know that "this time they're
really screwed." He suddenly shifted gears. "Of course. I do have
this love/hate thing about Ma Bell. In a way I almost like the
phone company. I guess I'd be very sad if they were to
isintegrate. In a way it's just that after having been so good they
turn out to have these things wrong with them. It's those flaws
that allow me to get in and mess with them, but I don't know.
There's something about it that gets to you and makes you want to
get to it, you know." I ask him what happens when he runs
out of interesting, forbidden things to learn about the phone
system. "I don't know, maybe I'd go to work for them for a while."
"In security even?" "I'd do it, sure. I just as soon play -- I'd
just as soon work on either side." "Even figuring out how to trap
phone phreaks? I said, recalling Mark Bernay's game." "Yes, that
might be interesting. Yes, I could figure out how to outwit the
phone phreaks. Of course if I got too good at it, it might become
boring again. Then I'd have to hope the phone phreaks got much
better and outsmarted me for a while. That would move the quality
of the game up one level. I might even habe yo help them out you
- 40 -
know, 'Well, kids, I wouldn't want this to get around but did you
ever think of -- ?' I could keep it going at higher and higher
levels forever." The dealer speaks up for the first time. He has
been staring at the soft blinking patterns of light and colors on
the translucent tiled wall facing him. (Actually there are no
patterns: the color and illumination of every tile is determined
by a computerized random-number generator designed by Gilbertson
which insures that th re can be no meaning to any sequence of events
in the tiles.) "Those are nice games you're talking about," says the
dealer to his friend. "But I wouldn't mind seeing them screwed. A
telephone isn't private anymore. You can't say anything you really
want to say on a telephone or you have to go through that paranoid
bullshit. 'Is it cool to talk on the phone?' I mean, even if it is
cool, if you have to ask 'Is it cool,' then it isn't cool. You know.
'Is it cool,' then it isn't cool. You know. Like those blind kids,
people are going to start putting together their own private
telephone companies if they want to really talk. And you know what
else. You don't hear silences on the phone anymore. They've got
this time-sharing thing on long-distance lines where you make a
pause and they snip out that piece of time and use it to carry part
of somebody else's conversation. Instead of a pause, where somebody's
maybe breathing or sighing, you get this blank hole and you only start
hearing again when someone says a word and even the beginning of the
word is clipped off. Silences don't count -- you're paying for them,
but they take them away from you. It's not cool to talk and you can't
hear someone when they don't talk. What the hell good is the phone?
I wouldn't mind seeing them totally screwed."
The Big Memphis Bust
Joe Engressia never wanted to screw Ma Bell. His dream had always
been to work for her. The day I visited Joe in his small apartment
on Union Avenue in Memphis, he was upset about another setback in
his application for a telephone job. "They're stalling on it. I
got a letter today telling me they'd have to postpone the interview
I requested again. My landlord read it for me. They gave me some
runaround about wanting papers on my rehabilitation status but I
think there's something else going on." When I switched on the
40-watt bulb in Joe's room -- he sometimes forgets when he has
guests -- it looked as if there was enough telephone hardware to
start a small phone company of his own. There is one phone on top
of his desk, one phone sitting in an open drawer beneath the desk
top. Next to the desk-top phone is a cigar-box-size M-F device
with big toggle switches, and next to that is some kind of switching
and coupling device with jacks and alligator plugs hanging loose.
Next to that is a Braille typewriter. On the floor next to the desk,
lying upside down like a dead tortoise, is the half-gutted body of an
old black standard phone. Across the room on a torn and dusty couch
are two more phones, one of them a touch-tone model; two tape
- 41 -
recorders; a heap of phone patches and cassettes, and a life-size
toy telephone. Our conversation is interrupted every ten minutes by
phone phreaks from all over the country ringing Joe on just about
every piece of equipment but the toy phone and the Braille
typewriter. One fourteen-year-old blind kid from Connecticut calls
up and tells Joe he's got a girl friend. He wants to talk to Joe
about girl friends. Joe says they'll talk later in the evening when
they can be alone on the line. Joe draws a deep breath, whistles
him off the air with an earsplitting 2600-cycle whistle. Joe is
pleased to get the calls but he looked worried and preoccupied that
evening, his brow constantly furrowed over his dark wandering eyes.
In addition to the phone-company stall, he has just learned that
his apartment house is due to be demolished in sixty days for urban
renewal. For all its shabbiness, the Union Avenue apartment house
has been Joe's first home-of-his-own and he's worried that he may
not find another before this one is demolished. But what really
bothers Joe is that switchmen haven't been listening to him. "I've
been doing some checking on 800 numbers lately, and I've discovered
that certain 800 numbers in New Hampshire couldn't be reached from
Missouri and Kansas. Now it may sound like a small thing, but I
don't like to see sloppy work; it makes me feel bad about the
lines. So I've been calling up switching offices and reporting it,
but they haven't corrected it. I called them up for the third time
today and instead of checking they just got mad. Well, that gets me
mad. I mean, I do try to help them. There's something about them
I can't understand -- you want to help them and they just try to
say you're defrauding them." It is Sunday evening and Joe invites
me to join him for dinner at a Holiday Inn. Frequently on Sunday
evening Joe takes some of his welfare money, calls a cab, and
treats himself to a steak dinner at one of Memphis' thirteen
Holiday Inns. (Memphis is the headquarters of Holiday Inn.
Holiday Inns have been a favorite for Joe ever since he made his
first solo phone trip to a Bell switching office in Jacksonville,
Florida, and stayed in the Holiday Inn there. He likes to stay at
Holiday Inns, he explains, because they represent freedom to him
and because the rooms are arranged the same all over the country so
he knows that any Holiday Inn room is familiar territory to him.
Just like any telephone.) Over steaks in the Pinnacle Restaurant
of the Holiday Inn Medical Center on Madison Avenue in Memphis,
Joe tells me the highlights of his life as a phone phreak. At age
seven, Joe learned his first phone trick. A mean baby-sitter, tired
of listening to little Joe play with the phone as he always did,
constantly, put a lock on the phone dial. "I got so mad. When
there's a phone sitting there and I can't use it... so I started
getting mad and banging the receiver up and down. I noticed I banged
it once and it dialed one. Well, then I tried banging it twice...."
In a few minutes Joe learned how to dial by pressing the hook switch
at the right time. "I was so excited I remember going 'whoo whoo' and
beat a box down on the floor." At age eight Joe learned about
whistling. "I was listening to some intercept non working-number
- 42 -
recording in L.A.- I was calling L.A. as far back as that, but I'd
mainly dial non working numbers because there was no charge, and
I'd listen to these recordings all day. Well, I was whistling
'cause listening to these recordings can be boring after a while
even if they are from L.A., and all of a sudden, in the middle of
whistling, the recording clicked off. I fiddled around whistling
some more, and the same thing happened. So I called up the switch
room and said, 'I'm Joe. I'm eight years old and I want to know
why when I whistle this tune the line clicks off.' He tried to
explain it to me, but it was a little too technical at the time.
I went on learning. That was a thing nobody was going to stop me
from doing. The phones were my life, and I was going to pay any
price to keep on learning. I knew I could go to jail. But I had
to do what I had to do to keep on learning." The phone is ringing
when we walk back into Joe's apartment on Union Avenue. It is
Captain Crunch. The Captain has been following me around by phone,
calling up everywhere I go with additional bits of advice and
explanation for me and whatever phone phreak I happen to be visiting.
This time the Captain reports he is calling from what he describes
as "my hideaway high up in the Sierra Nevada." He pulses out lusty
salvos of M-F and tells Joe he is about to "go out and get a little
action tonight. Do some phreaking of another kind, if you know
what I mean." Joe chuckles. The Captain then tells me to make sure
I understand that what he told me about tying up the nation's phone
lines was true, but that he and the phone phreaks he knew never used
the technique for sabotage. They only learned the technique to help
the phone company. "We do a lot of troubleshooting for them. Like
this New Hampshire/Missouri WATS-line flaw I've been screaming about.
We help them more than they know." After we say good-bye to the
Captain and Joe whistles him off the line, Joe tells me about a
disturbing dream he had the night before: "I had been caught and
they were taking me to a prison. It was a long trip. They were
taking me to a prison a long long way away. And we stopped at a
Holiday Inn and it was my last night ever using the phone and I was
crying and crying, and the lady at the Holiday Inn said, 'Gosh,
honey, you should never be sad at a Holiday Inn. You should always
be happy here. Especially since it's your last night.' And that
just made it worse and I was sobbing so much I couldn't stand it."
Two weeks after I left Joe Engressia's apartment, phone-company
security agents and Memphis police broke into it. Armed with a
warrant, which they left pinned to a wall, they confiscated every
piece of equipment in the room, including his toy telephone. Joe
as placed under arrest and taken to the city jail where he was
forced to spend the night since he had no money and knew no one
in Memphis to call. It is not clear who told Joe what that night,
but someone told him that the phone company had an open-and-shut
case against him because of revelations of illegal activity he had
made to a phone-company undercover agent. By morning Joe had become
convinced that the reporter from Esquire, with whom he had spoken
two weeks ago, was the undercover agent. He probably had
- 43 -
ugly thoughts about someone he couldn't see gaining his confidence,
listening to him talk about his personal obsessions and dreams,
while planning all the while to lock him up. "I really thought he
was a reporter," Engressia told the Memphis Press-Seminar. "I told
him everything...." Feeling betrayed, Joe proceeded to confess
everything to the press and police. As it turns out, the phone
company did use an undercover agent to trap Joe, although it was
not the Esquire reporter. Ironically, security agents were alerted
and began to compile a case against Joe because of one of his acts
of love for the system: Joe had called an internal service
department to report that he had located a group of defective
long-distance trunks, and to complain again about the New
Hampshire/Missouri WATS problem. Joe always liked Ma Bell's lines
to be clean and responsive. A suspicious switchman reported Joe to
the security agents who discovered that Joe had never had a
long-distance call charged to his name. Then the security agents
learned that Joe was planning one of his phone trips to a local
switching office. The security people planted one of their agents
in the switching office. He posed as a student switchman and followed
Joe around on a tour. He was extremely friendly and helpful to Joe,
leading him around the office by the arm. When the tour was over he
offered Joe a ride back to his apartment house. On the way he asked
Joe -- one tech man to another -- about "those blue boxers" he'd
heard about. Joe talked about them freely, talked about his blue
box freely, and about all the other things he could do with the
phones. The next day the phone-company security agents slapped a
monitoring tape on Joe's line, which eventually picked up an illegal
call. Then they applied for the search warrant and broke in. In
court Joe pleaded not guilty to possession of a blue box and theft
of service. A sympathetic judge reduced the charges to malicious
mischief and found him guilty on that count, sentenced him to two
thirty-day sentences to be served concurrently and then suspended
the sentence on condition that Joe promise never to play with phones
again. Joe promised, but the phone company refused to restore his
service. For two weeks after the trial Joe could not be reached
except through the pay phone at his apartment house, and the landlord
screened all calls for him. Phone-phreak Carl managed to get through
to Joe after the trial, and reported that Joe sounded crushed by the
whole affair. "What I'm worried about," Carl told me, "is that Joe
means it this time. The promise. That he'll never phone-phreak
again. That's what he told me, that he's given up phone-phreaking
for good. I mean his entire life. He says he knows they're
going to be watching him so closely for the rest of his life he'll
never be able to make a move without going straight to jail. He
sounded very broken up by the whole experience of being in jail.
It was awful to hear him talk that way. I don't know. I hope maybe he
had to sound that way. Over the phone, you know." He reports that
the entire phone-phreak underground is up in arms over the phone
company's treatment of Joe. "All the while Joe had his hopes
pinned on his application for a phone-company job,
- 44 -
they were stringing him along getting ready to bust him. That gets
me mad. Joe spent most of his time helping them out. The
bastards. They think they can use him as an example. All of
sudden they're harassing us on the coast. Agents are jumping up on
our lines. They just busted ------'s mute yesterday and ripped out
his lines. But no matter what Joe does, I don't think we're going
to take this lying down." Two weeks later my phone rings and about
eight phone phreaks in succession say hello from about eight
different places in the country, among them Carl, Ed, and Captain
Crunch. A nationwide phone-phreak conference line has been
reestablished through a switching machine in --------, with the
cooperation of a disgruntled switchman. "We have a special guest
with us today," Carl tells me. The next voice I hear is Joe's. He
reports happily that he has just moved to a place called
Millington, Tennessee, fifteen miles outside of Memphis, where he
has been hired as a telephone-set repairman by a small independent
phone company. Someday he hopes to be an equipment troubleshooter.
"It's the kind of job I dreamed about. They found out about me
from the publicity surrounding the trial. Maybe Ma Bell did me a
favor busting me. I'll have telephones in my hands all day long."
"You know the expression, 'Don't get mad, get even'?" phone-phreak
Carl asked me. "Well, I think they're going to be very sorry about
what they did to Joe and what they're trying to do to us."
- 45 -
Files By - XTC
WIRETAPPING AND DIVESTITURE: By - XTC
EEVER MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SOCIAL ENGINEERING, THE KID & CO.
AND I NATURALLY CARRIED ON A CONVERSATION WITH THE NEW JERSEY BELL
FONE INSTALLER WHEN HE CAME TO PUT IN MY MODEM LINE. THE
CONVERSATION TURNED TO FONE TAPPING, AND SEVERAL INTERESTING
DETAILS CAME TO LIGHT. HE SWORE UP AND DOWN THAT BELL HAD NOTHING
TO DO WITH WIRE TAPPING. HE SAID THE SUPERVISOR RECEIVES SEALED
ORDERS FROM THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE, MERELY PASSING THEM ON TO THE
LINEMEN. THEN THE LINEMEN FOLLOW THE ORDERS TO GO UP ON THE POLES
AND MARK THE PAIR IN THE "CAN" THAT FIT THE FONE LINE IN QUESTION,
AND THEN LEAVE THE SITE.
ONE DAY, OUR LINEMAN DROVE BACK BY THE POLE HE HAD MARKED
EARLIER IN THE DAY, AND SAW A BELL TRUCK. WONDERING WHO IT WAS, HE
STOPPED TO ASK. THE GUY UP ON THE POLE TOLD HIM TO GO AWAY AND TO
LEAVE HIM ALONE. SINCE OUR FRIENDLY LINEMAN DIDN'T RECOGNIZE THE
MYSTERY MAN AS ONE OF THE LINEMEN FOR THE AREA, HE ASKED HIS
SUPERVISOR WHO IT COULD HAVE BEEN. HIS SUPERVISOR CURTLY TOLD HIM
TO FORGET THE ENTIRE INCIDENT.
THE LINEMAN TOLD US THAT IN THE OLD DAYS THE TELCO AND THE
PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE WORKED HAND-IN-HAND. THEY WOULD LET THE
AUTHORITIES RIGHT INTO THE CO TO LISTEN IN ON CONVERSATIONS. BUT
THIS ENDED AROUND 1973 WHEN SOMEONE SUED JERSEY BELL BECAUSE OF
THIS TOO CLOSE INTERACTION. THE TELCO THEN REALIZED THAT THEY
DIDN'T HAVE TO GO THAT FAR IN ORDER TO HELP THE POLICE. AFTER
THIS THEY GRADUALLY BROKE FROM THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP. NOW THE
FONE COMPANY MERELY MARKS THE LINES, AND THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
HANDLES THE REST. HE ALSO SAID THAT NOW THE POLICE SOMETIMES USE
ULTRASONIC WAVES BOUNCED OFF OF WINDOW PANES TO LISTEN TO SUSPECTS,
REMOVING ALL CONTACT WITH THE FONE LINES. SINCE THE PRESENCE OF A
FONE COMPANY TRUCK MESSING WITH TELEPHONE WIRES IS
TAKEN FOR GRANTED BY THE GENERAL POPULACE, THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE
ALSO HAS A COUPLE OF THEM FOR UNDERCOVER WORK. SINCE THEY GOT THEM
BACK IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF BELL FRIENDLINESS, THE TRUCKS TEND TO
BE THE OLDER MODELS, WITH OUTDATED GEAR. THE LINEMAN TOLD US A SURE
WAY TO IDENTIFY THE LOCAL POLICE'S TRUCKS: THEY HAVE WOODEN
LADDERS. NEW JERSEY BELL SWITCHED OVER TO PLASTIC ONES YEARS AGO.
CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION WITH THE LINEMAN, WE COVERED THE
BREAKUP. NEW JERSEY BELL NOW NO LONGER GIVES AS MUCH OVERTIME AS
IT ONCE DID. THE LINEMAN COMPLAINED THAT HIS STANDARD OF LIVING
HAD GONE DOWN SINCE THE BREAKUP AS HE NO LONGER HAS AS MUCH TAKE
HOME PAY. THE BREAKUP HAS CAUSED A TOTAL SEVERING OF TIES WITH
AT&T. HE PROFESSED TOTAL IGNORANCE ABOUT LONG DISTANCE CALLING.
HE HAD ORIGINALLY GONE WITH AT&T, BUT DISLIKED FIXING PBX'S AND
COMPUTER SYSTEMS. AS SOON AS HE COULD, HE SWITCHED BACK TO THE
LOCAL OPERATING COMPANY. HE TOLD US ABOUT A TECHNICAL INSTITUTE
- 46 -
WESTERN UNION WAS OPERATING SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDWEST. HE HAD GONE
THERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE VARIOUS TYPES OF SWITCHING SYSTEMS. ON
CAMPUS WAS A GIGANTIC, MULTI-STORY BUILDING SPLIT UP INTO ROOMS
APPROXIMATELY THE SIZE OF GYMNASIUMS. IN EACH WAS A FULLY
OPERATIONAL SCALE MODEL OF EACH OF THE VARIOUS SWITCHING SYSTEMS.
WESTERN ELECTRIC MANUFACTURES, INCLUDING ALL THE ESS AND CROSSBAR
MACHINES, AS WELL AS SOME STEP-BY-STEP, AND SEVERAL TYPES OF PBX'S.
THEY TROUBLE-SHOT AND REPAIRED PROBLEMS IN THESE MACHINES IN ORDER
TO LEARN ABOUT ACTUAL OPERATING EQUIPMENT. WE TALKED ABOUT THE
LOCAL SWITCHING EQUIPMENT, WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE A #1A ESS.
ACCORDING TO HIM, SOON ALL THE LOCAL CO'S WILL BE RUN AUTOMATICALLY
FROM CENTRAL LOCATIONS CALLED "HUBS". THE "HUB" HANDLES ANY
OVERLOAD BETWEEN CENTRAL OFFICES THAT MIGHT CAUSE THE DREADED
"GRIDLOCK" OF THE FONE SYSTEM. IF THE INTEROFFICE SIGNALING LINES
GET OVERLOADED, THE CALLS ARE REROUTED THROUGH THE HUB. THE HUB
ALSO SERVES AS A CENTRAL SPOT WHERE TROUBLES AT THE LOCAL CO ARE
HANDLED IN THE FIRST STAGES OF TROUBLE-SHOOTING. THE "HUB" CONCEPT
IS ALIVE AND WELL IN OUR LOCAL AREA, WITH #5 ESS, THE THIRD
INSTALLED IN THE ENTIRE NATION, RUNNING THE WHOLE OPERATION.
WHEN HE WAS GETTING READY TO LEAVE HE THANKED US FOR THE
INTERESTING CONVERSATION, AND WE WAVED AT HIM AS HE PULLED OUT.
I NOW NOT ONLY HAD A NEW FONE LINE, BUT ALSO A LOT OF USEFUL AND
INTERESTING INFO, AS WELL AS THE SATISFACTION OF A FRIENDLY CHAT.
WIRETAPPING AND DIVESTITURE:
THE LESSON IS CLEAR. WHENEVER A BELL EMPLOYEE VISITS YOUR
HOUSE, FELL PHREE TO ASK WHATEVER YOU WANT, WITHIN REASON. MOST
ARE EXTREMELY WILLING TO SHOOT THE BULL ABOUT ALMOST ANYTHING OF
WHICH THEY HAVE KNOWLEDGE. AT FIRST, MERELY JOKE WITH THEM
LIGHTHEARTEDLY, IN ORDER TO GET THEM OFF THERE GUARD. LEGIT
QUESTIONS ASKABLE BY A NORMAL CUSTOMER, SUCH AS EQUAL ACCESS
CUTOVERS, WILL GET THEM ROLLING, LEAVING YOU TO DIRECT THE
CONVERSATION WHEREVER YOU LIKE. ASKING ABOUT THE BREAKUP AND HOW
IT AFFECTED THEM IS A SURE FIRE WAY TO GET THEM TALKING. QUESTIONS
LIKE "HOW DOES THE FONE NETWORK WORK?" ALSO ARE GOOD, ESPECIALLY IF
YOU GUIDE THEM INTO THE DISCUSSION OF SWITCHING TECHNOLOGY. MOST
BELL EMPLOYEES ARE REALLY GLAD TO TALK TO SOMEONE. REMEMBER, THEY
USUALLY INTERACT WITH DISGRUNTLED CUSTOMERS WITH COMPLAINTS. THEIR
SPOUSES PROBABLY YELL AT THEM, AND THEIR SUPERVISORS EITHER COMPLAIN
ABOUT THEIR PERFORMANCE OR IGNORE THEM. SOCIETY AT LARGE JUST DOESN'T
CARE ABOUT THEM. THEY'RE MOST PROBABLY DISENCHANTED WITH THE WORLD AT
LARGE, AND MAYBE EVEN DISSATISFIED WITH THEIR JOBS. THE CHANCE TO
ALK TO SOME ONE WHO MERELY WANTS TO LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY IS A
WELCOME CHANGE. THEY WILL TALK ON AND ON ABOUT ALMOST ANYTHING,
FROM TELECOMMUNICATIONS TO THEIR HOME LIFE AND THEIR CHILDHOOD.
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR SOCIAL ENGINEERING ARE ENDLESS. REMEMBER,
BELL EMPLOYEES ARE HUMANS, TOO. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LISTEN.
- 47 -
ESSENCE OF TELEPHONE CONFERENCING: By < EXC >
TELEPHONE CONFERENCING IS AN EASY WAY OF GETTING MANY FRIENDS
TOGETHER AT ONCE. THIS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED EASILY WITH LITTLE OR NO
TROUBLE WHAT SO EVER. THE TECHNIQUES THAT I WILL TEACH YOU DO NOT
REQUIRE A BLUE BOX OR A TOUCH TONE PHONE LINE. THE ONLY
PREREQUISITE IS THAT YOU HAVE A PHONE THAT HAS A TONE SWITCH ON IT
OR HAVE A HOOKABLE TOUCH TONE KEYPAD. NOW, IF YOU ARE THE
PARANOID TYPE OF PERSON AND REFUSE TO USE YOUR OWN PHONE OUT OF
YOUR HOUSE THEN HERE ARE SOME SIMPLE WAYS OF GETTING CONFERENCES
STARTED FROM ANOTHER PHONE. GO TO A MALL OR A PLACE WHERE YOU KNOW
THE PHONE IS BEING PAYED FOR BY THE BUSINESS IT IS IN.
NOW THERE ARE TWO TO CALL THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR; DIAL "0" TO
GET YOUR LOCAL OPERATOR SO SHE CAN PUT YOU THROUGH TO THE
CONFERENCE OPERATOR OR DIAL THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR DIRECTLY IF YOU
HAVE THE NUMBER HANDY. THE SYSTEM YOU WILL BE LINKED UP TO IS
CALLED THE "ALLIANCE" SYSTEM. THERE ARE THREE BRANCHES; 1000, 2000,
3000.
NOW ONCE YOU HAVE GOTTEN THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR YOU TELL HER
YOU WOULD LIKE TO START A CONFERENCE AND YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAINTAIN
CONTROL OF IT. SHE WILL THEN PROCEED TO ASK YOU FOR YOUR NAME AND
NUMBER. YOU WILL THEN GIVE HER A FAKE NAME AND THE NUMBER OF THE
PAY PHONE. SHE WILL HANG UP AND CALL YOU BACK ONCE SHE HAS CHECKED
THE NUMBER. THEY USUALLY DON'T REALIZE IT IS A
PAYPHONE SO DON'T THINK IT WON'T WORK! NOW ONCE THE OPERATOR HAS
GIVEN YOU CONTROL YOU WILL THEN PROCEED TO HACK MY VOICE PHONE AND
PUT ME ON THE CONFERENCE.
NOW, THE OTHER WAY OF STARTING A CONFERENCE IN WHICH YOU
DON'T GET A LIVE OPERATOR IS A "PBX". WITH THIS YOU WILL CALL A PBX
NUMBER AND YOU WILL THEN RECEIVE A RECORDING OF A BUSINESS OR
OFFICE CO. THEN WHEN THE RECORDING IS OVER YOU WILL HERE A BEEP.
THEN AFTER ABOUT 10-30 SECONDS AFTER THE BEEP YOU WILL GET A DIAL
TONE ON THE ON THE END OF THE PBX. YOU WILL THEN TYPE THE PBX CODE
WHICH WILL THEN RESPOND WITH A RECORDING WELCOMING YOU TO THE
CONFERENCING NETWORK (WHICH WILL IN MOST IF NOT ALL BE
THE "ALLIANCE" SYSTEM).
IT WILL BE SELF EXPLANATORY FROM THERE. NOW IF YOU DON'T WISH
TO CALL THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR EITHER WAY ALREADY EXPLAINED THEN
THERE IS A WAS OF GETTING YOUR FRIENDS IN CONFERENCE. THIS IS DONE
OVER A LOOP EXTENSION. NO ONE WILL HAVE CONTROL, BUT YOU WILL STILL
BE ON CONFERENCE. THIS IS CALLED THE SEVEN LINE LOOP EXTENSION.
THIS MEANS YOU CAN HAVE UP TO SEVEN MEMBERS, BUT THAT IS IT! THE
NUMBER IS IN LA, CA. 213-206-2820. THE LAST WAY I WILL
EXPLAIN TO YOU IF YOU ARE IN DESPERATE NEED OF A CONFERENCE IS TO
GO TO PAY PHONE LIKE I MENTIONED BEFORE ANY MAKE SURE SOME BUSINESS
PAYS THE BILL FOR IT THEN CALL THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR IN THE
FASHIONS MENTIONED AND ASK THE TO PLACE CONFERENCE CALLS.
- 48 -
THE WILL THEN ASK FOR THE NUMBERS OF THE PEOPLE TO PUT ON
CONFERENCE, YOU GIVE HER THE NUMBERS AND SHE WILL PUT YOU ALL ON
CONFERENCE. WHEN YOU ARE DONE YOU WILL HANG UP ON HER SO THERE
WILL BE NO ONE IN CONTROL.THAT MEANS THE CONFERENCE WILL BE BILLED
TO THE PAYPHONE AND NO ONE CAN BE BLAMED FOR THE CONFERENCE DUE TO
NO ONE BEING IN CONTROL! ***NOTE*** THE CONFERENCE OPERATOR WILL
NOT BE ON WHILE YOU ARE ALL TALKING! REMEMBER THAT CONFERENCES ARE
NOT HARD AND IT IS VERY HARD TO GET ARRESTED ON ONE DUE TO WHAT I
HAVE MENTIONED.
REMEMBER:REACH OUT AND PHREAK SOMEONE!
[TELEPHONE CONFERENCE CONTROLS]
# - CONTROL MODE
# - 6 PASSES CONTROL
# - 1 + AREA CODE & NUMBER ADDS
# - 9 SILENT MODE
# - 7 GETS CONFERENCE OPERATOR
* - ENDS CONFERENCE
THE "#" IS THE CONTROL KEY ON YOUR CONFERENCES. WHEN YOU PASS
CONTROL TO SOMEONE ELSE HIT THE "#" THEN "6". WAIT FOR THE
RECORDING TO SAY ENTER # OF PERSON TO PASS CONTROL TO, THEN ENTER
THE NUMBER OF THE PERSON YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE CONTROL TO.
TO ADD A PERSON ON TO THE CONFERENCE HIT "#" THEN "1","AREA
CODE","NUMBER". THEN WHEN THE PERSON ANSWERS WAIT FIVE SECONDS THEN
HIT THE "#" TO ADD. IF YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF THE CONFERENCE AND YOU
WANT TO HEAR EVERYONE ELSE, BUT YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE HEARD IT "#"
THEN "9" THEN THE "#" TO REJOIN THE CONFERENCE. REMEMBER AFTER
ADDING SOMEONE ON OR PASSING CONTROL TO SOMEONE YOU MUST ALWAYS HIT
THE "#" TO REJOIN THE OTHERS ON CONFERENCE:
PASSING CONTROL: "#", "6", WAIT FOR RECORDING TO SAY ENTER NUMBER
OF PARTY TO GIVE CONTROL TO THEN ENTER NUMBER AND HIT "#" TO REJOIN
YOUR CONFERENCE.IF YOU EVER WANT TO GET A CONFERENCE OPERATOR FOR
SOME STRANGE REASON THEN HIT "#","7" AND WAIT FOR A CONFERENCE
OPERATOR TO CLICK ON. TO END A CONFERENCE HIT "*". WITH HELP FROM:
SILICON FALCON, SILVER CONDOR, AND THE ELIMINATOR.
Phone Tapping: By - ETC
HERE IS SOME INFO ON PHONE TAPS. I HAVE ENCLOSED A SCHEMATIC
FOR A SIMPLE WIRETAP & INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOOKING UP A TAPE RECORDER
CONTROL RELAY TO THE PHONE LINE. FIRST I'LL DISCUSS TAPS A LITTLE.
THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF TAPS. THERE ARE TRANSMITTERS,
WIRED TAPS AND INDUCTION TAPS TO NAME A FEW. WIRED AND WIRELESS
TRANSMITTERS MUST BE PHYSICALLY CONNECTED TO THE
LINE BEFORE THEY'LL DO ANY GOOD. ONCE A WIRELESS TAP IS CONNECTED
TO THE LINE, IT CAN TRANSMIT ALL CONVERSATIONS OVER A LIMITED
RANGE. THE PHONES IN THE HOUSE CAN EVEN BE MODIFIED TO PICK UP
- 49 -
CONVERSATIONS IN THE ROOM & TRANSMIT THEM TOO! THESE TAPS ARE
USUALLY POWERED OFF THE PHONE LINE, BUT CAN HAVE AN EXTERNAL POWER
SOURCE. WIRED TAPS, ON THE OTHER HAND, NEED NO POWER SOURCE, BUT A
WIRE MUST BE RUN FROM THE LINE TO THE LISTENER OR TO A TRANSMITTER.
THERE ARE OBVIOUS ADVANTAGES OF WIRELESS TAPS OVER WIRED ONES.
THERE IS ONE TYPE OF WIRELESS TAP THAT LOOKS LIKE A NORMAL
TELEPHONE MIKE. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS REPLACE THE ORIGINAL MIKE
WITH THIS & IT'LL TRANSMIT ALL CONVERSATIONS!
THERE IS AN EXOTIC TYPE OF WIRED TAP KNOWN AS THE 'INFINITY
TRANSMITTER' OR 'HARMONICA BUG'. IN ORDER TO HOOK UP ONE OF THESE,
YOU NEED ACCESS TO THE TARGET TELEPHONE. IT HAS A TONE DECODER &
SWITCH INSIDE. WHEN IT IS INSTALLED, SOMEONE CALLS THE TAPPED
PHONE & *BEFORE* IT RINGS, BLOWS A WHISTLE OVER THE LINE. THE
X-MITTER RECEIVES THE TONE & PICKS UP THE PHONE VIA A RELAY. THE
MIKE ON THE PHONE IS ACTIVATED SO THE CALLER CAN HEAR ALL
CONVERSATIONS IN THE ROOM.
Phone Tapping:
THERE IS A SWEEP TONE TEST AT 415/BUG-1111 WHICH CAN BE USED
TO DETECT ON OF THESE TAPS. IF ONE OF THESE IS ON YOUR LINE & THE
TEST # SENDS THE CORRECT TONE, YOU'LL HEAR A CLICK.
INDUCTION TAPS HAVE ONE BIG ADVANTAGE OVER TAPS THAT MUST BE
PHYSICALLY WIRED TO THE PHONE. THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE TOUCHING THE
PHONE IN ORDER TO PICK UP THE CONVERSATION. THEY WORK ON THE SAME
PRINCIPLE AS THE LITTLE SUCTION-CUP TAPE RECORDER MIKES YOU CAN GET
AT RADIO SHACK. INDUCTION MIKES CAN BE HOOKED UP TO A TRANSMITTER
OR BE WIRED. HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE USING THE
PHONE: A SALESMAN WALKS INTO AN OFFICE & MAKES A FONE CALL. HE
FAKES THE CONVERSATION, BUT WHEN HE HANGS UP HE SLIPS SOME
FOAM-RUBBER CUBES UNDER THE HANDSET, SO THE FONE IS STILL OFF THE
HOOK. THE CALLED PARTY CAN STILL HEAR ALL CONVERSATIONS IN THE
ROOM. WHEN SOMEONE PICKS UP THE FONE, THE CUBES FALL AWAY
UNNOTICED. I USE A TAP ON MY LINE TO MONITOR WHAT AE-PRO IS DOING
WHEN IT AUTO-DIALS, SINCE IT DOESN'T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HANDSET
ON THE APPLE CAT II. I CAN ALSO HOOK UP THE TAP TO A CASSETTE
RECORDER OR AMPLIFIER. HERE IS THE SCHEMATIC:
- 50 -
-------)!----)!(------------->
)!(
CAP ^ )!(
)!(
)!(
)!(
^^^^^---)!(------------->
^ 100K
!
!<INPUT
THE 100K POT IS USED FOR VOLUME. IT SHOULD BE ON ITS HIGHEST
(LEAST RESISTANCE) SETTING IF YOU HOOK A SPEAKER ACROSS THE OUTPUT,
BUT IT SHOULD BE SET ON ITS HIGHEST RESISTANCE FOR A TAPE RECORDER
OR AMPLIFIER. YOU MAY FIND IT NECESSARY TO ADD ANOTHER 10-40K.
THE CAPACITOR SHOULD BE AROUND .47 MFD. IT'S ONLY PURPOSE IS TO
PREVENT THE RELAY IN THE CO FROM TRIPPING & THINKING YOU HAVE THE
FONE OFF THE HOOK. THE AUDIO OUTPUT TRANSFORMER AVAILABLE AT RADIO
SHACK (273-1380) IS FINE FOR THE X-FORMER. THE BLACK & GREEN ARE
FINE FOR INPUT & THE RED & WHITE GO TO THE OUTPUT DEVICE. YOU MAY
WANT TO EXPERIMENT WITH THE X-FORMER FOR THE BEST OUTPUT.
HOOKING UP A TAPE RECORDER CONTROL RELAY IS EAST. JUST ONE OF
THE FONE WIRES (USU. RED) BEFORE THE TELEPHONES & HOOK ONE END TO
ONE WIRE OF THE RELAY & THE OTHER END TO THE OTHER RELAY WIRE.
LIKE THIS:
------^^^^^^^^^------------
---------
RELAY^^
- 51 -
Phreaking COSMOS: By- Freddy
COSMOS is Bell's computer for handling information on customer
lines, special services on lines, and orders to change line
equipment, disconnect lines, etc. COSMOS stands for Computerized
System for Mainframe Operations. It is based on the UNIX operating
system and, depending upon the COSMOS and
upon your access, has some, many, or no UNIX standard commands.
COSMOS is powerful, but there is no reason to be afraid of it.
This article will give some of the basic, pertinent info on how
users get in, account format, and a few other goodies.
Password Identification
To get onto COSMOS you need a dialup, account, password, and
wire center (WC). Wire centers are two letter codes that tell what
section of the COSMOS you are in. There are different WC's f or
different areas and groups of exchanges. Examples are PB, SR, LK,
et c. Sometimes there are accounts that have no password; obviously
such accounts are the easiest to hack.
Checking It Out
Let's suppose you have a COSMOS number which you obtained one
way or another. The first thing to do would be to make sure it is
really a COSMOS system, not some other Bell or AT&T computer. To
do this, you would call it and connect your modem,, then hit some
returns until you got a response. It should say:
';LOGIN:' or 'NAME:'.
If you enter some garbage it should say:
'PASSWORD:'.
If you hit a return and it says 'WC?', it is a COSMOS system. If
it says something like 'TA%' then you're in business. If it
doesn't do any of the above, then it is either some other kind of
system, or, if you're not getting anything at all, the dialup has
probably gone bad.
Getting In
COSMOS has certain accounts that are usually on the system,
one of which might not have a password. They consist of ROOT (most
powerful and almost always on the system), SYS (second most
powerful, still many privileges), BIN (a little less power), PREOP
(a little less), and COSMOS (hardly any privileges, like a normal
user). The way to tell if they have passwords is by
entering accounts at the ';LOGIN:' or ' NAME:' prompt, and if it
jumps straight to 'WC?', all you need is a WC to get in. But
- 52 -
suppose all of the accounts have passwords? You have two choices.
You can try to hack the password and WC to one of the above
accounts. I won't deal with this method, as is self-explanatory.
Or you can do something I find much easier... call the COSMOS
during business hours and hope that someone forgot to log off. Keep
calling until when you connect and hit return until you get a 'WC%'
prompt. 'WC' is the WC that the account you found is currently in.
You are now in!
What to Do while on-line
The first thing you want to do is write down the WC you are in.
Only on our first login it is a good idea to print everything or
dump everything to a buffer.
Commands
'WCFLDS'(!) : Should list all WC's.
'WHO' : Should print everyone currently logged on the
system, giving some accounts.
'TTY' : Tells what terminal port you are on.
'WHERE' : Should tell the location of the COSMOS
installation.
'WHAT' : Tells what version of COSNIX, COSMOS's operating
system, it is.
'LS *' : Prints all the files you have access to.
'CD /dir' : Connects you to the directory '/dir'.
'CAT filename ' : Prints the file 'filename'.
'Q' : Quits the editor.
CTRL- Y. : Logs off
'TAT' : Sometimes prints a little help file.
'ISH' : Check someone's telefone #, type 'ISH' at the
COSMOS 'WC%'
prompt. Then type. 'HTN XXX-XXXX' : (Hunt Telephone Number) to
tell you about the local number you are interested in. 'CAT
/ETC/PASSWD': Prints out the password file, if you have access. The
passwords are almost always encrypted, but you get a list of all
the accounts. If you are lucky, one of the lines will have two
colons after the account name. This means there is no prompt from
the ';LOGIN:' or 'NAME:' prompts when you enter that account. To
run a file just type the name followed by a return. When the system
gives you a '-', you type a '.', and it will type all kinds of info
on the phone number you entered (in Bell abbreviations, of course).
If it is not a good exchange, it will say something to that effect.
You type a period to end the ISH. If you wish to learn more
information about COSMOS, find yourself a COSMOS manual or look at
future issues of 2600. A UNIX manual would also be helpful for
standard UNIX commands.
- 53 -
FACS FACTS: By- Freddy
BELL ATLANTIC (AND PROBABLY THE REST OF THE U.S. SOON ENOUGH)
IS REVAMPING COSMOS. THE PROJECT IS CALLED FACS (FACILITATED
ASSIGNMENT AND CONTROL SYSTEM).FACS IS COMPOSED OF 5 MODULES WHICH
ARE DESIGNED TO FUNCTION AS A UNIFIED SYSTEM. THE PREMIS AND THE
COSMOS SYSTEMS CAN FUNCTION AS ST AND-ALONE SYSTEMS.THE FIVE PARTS
OF FACS ARE PREMIS,SOAC, LFACS,COSMOS,AND THE WM. THE PREMIS
(PREMISES INFORMATION SYSTEM) SUPPORTS BOTH RESIDENCE AND
BUSINESS ACCOUNTS. PREMIS IS USED FOR VARIOUS INQUIRIES FOR THE
STREET ADDRESS GUIDE(SAG),IE::PHONE NUMBERS,BILLING CHARGES,
CREDIT, ETC. THE SECOND PART OF FACS IS THE SOAC(SERVICE ORDER
ANALYSIS AND CONTROL). THIS IS PRIMARILY USED TO INPUT SERVICE
ORDER DATA INTO FACS, AND TO GET THE APPROPRIATE OUTPUT. SOAC
INTERPRETS, VALIDATES,AND DECOMPOSES ALL INPUTED DATA AND SENDS THE
INFO TO THE COSMOS AND THE LFACS SYSTEMS. THE THIRD PART OF THE
SYSTEM IS LFACS(LOOP FACILITIES AND CONTROL SYSTEM). THIS IS THE
COMPONENT OF FACS THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING THE
INVENTORY,DOING THE ASSIGNMENTS, ADMINISTRATING INQUIRIES AND
REPORTS, AND IS THE INVENTORY TRANSFORMATION CENTER. THIS PART OF
FACS WILL BE MOSTLY USED FOR AIDING THE AT&T LINEMEN. THE COSMOS
SYSTEM(COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR MAINFRAME OPERATIONS) COMPRISES THE
FOURTH PART OF THE FACS SYSTEM. COSMOS IS THE COMPONENT OF FACS
THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING THE MECHANIZED INVENTORY OF MDF
FACILITIES,STORING CUSTOM CALL FEATURES(IE:SPEED DIALING
NUMBERS),AND OTHER MISC. INFO. THE FIFTH AND LAST PIECE OF THE FACS
SYSTEM IS THE WORK MANAGER (WM). HIS COMPONENT SERVES AS THE
FRONT-END PROCESSOR FOR COSMOS. IT ENABLES A NUMBER OF COSMOS
COMPUTERS TO RELIABLY COMMUNICATE WITH THE OTHER FACS COMPONENTS.
WM SERVES AS THE MESSAGES SWITCHING SYSTEM FOR THE FACS PIECES,
AND GENERALLY IS THE "MESSENGER AND STABILIZER" OF THE SYSTEM. THE
HARDWARE THAT WILL RUN THIS FACS SYSTEM IS: COSMOS: 22-WECO.
3B-20S MINI COMPS. WM: 6-WECO. 3B-20S MINI COMPS.
SOAC-LFACS-PREMIS: TWO SPERRY UNIVAC 1100/92 MAINFRAMES. BANCS 2
THP CYBER 1000 PROCESSORS.
- 54 -
THE HISTORY OF BRITISH PHREAKING: By - < LEX LUTHOR >
NOTE: THE BRITISH POST OFFICE, IS THE U.S. EQUIVALENT OF MA
BELL. IN BRITAIN, PHREAKING GOES BACK TO THE EARLY FIFTIES, WHEN
THE TECHNIQUE OF 'TOLL A DROP BACK' WAS DISCOVERED. TOLL A WAS AN
EXCHANGE NEAR ST. PAULS WHICH ROUTED CALLS BETWEEN LONDON AND
NEARBY NON-LONDON EXCHANGES. THE TRICK WAS TO DIAL AN UNALLOCATED
NUMBER, AND THEN DEPRESS THE RECEIVER-REST FOR 1/2
SECOND. THIS FLASHING INITIATED THE 'CLEAR FORWARD' SIGNAL,
LEAVING THE CALLER WITH AN OPEN LINE INTO THE TOLL A EXCHANGE.THE
COULD THEN DIAL 018, WHICH FORWARDED HIM TO THE TRUNK EXCHANGE AT
THAT TIME, THE FIRST LONG DISTANCE EXCHANGE IN BRITAIN AND FOLLOW
IT WITH THE CODE FOR THE DISTANT EXCHANGE TO WHICH HE WOULD BE
CONNECTED AT NO EXTRA CHARGE. THE SIGNALS NEEDED TO CONTROL THE
UK NETWORK TODAY WERE PUBLISHED IN THE "INSTITUTION OF POST OFFICE
ENGINEERS JOURNAL" AND REPRINTED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES (15 OCT.
1972). THE SIGNALLING SYSTEM THEY USE: SIGNALLING SYSTEM NO. 3
USES PAIRS OF FREQUENCIES SELECTED FROM 6 TONES SEPARATED BY 120HZ.
WITH THAT INFO, THE PHREAKS MADE "BLEEPERS" OR AS THEY ARE CALLED
HERE IN THE U.S. "BLUE BOX", BUT THEY DO UTILIZE DIFFERENT MF
TONES THEN THE U.S., THUS, YOUR U.S. BLUE BOX THAT YOU SMUGGLED
INTO THE UK WILL NOT WORK, UNLESS YOU CHANGE THE FREQUENCIES.
IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES, A SIMPLER SYSTEM BASED ON DIFFERENT
NUMBERS OF PULSES WITH THE SAME FREQUENCY (2280HZ) WAS USED.
FOR MORE INFO ON THAT, TRY TO GET A HOLD OF: ATKINSON'S
"TELEPHONY AND SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY". IN THE EARLY DAYS OF BRITISH
PHREAKING, THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY TITAN COMPUTER WAS USED TO
RECORD AND CIRCULATE NUMBERS FOUND BY THE EXHAUSTIVE DIALING OF
LOCAL NETWORKS. THESE NUMBERS WERE USED TO CREATE A CHAIN OF LINKS
FROM LOCAL EXCHANGE TO LOCAL EXCHANGE ACROSS THE COUNTRY,
BYPASSING THE TRUNK CIRCUITS. BECAUSE THE INTERNAL ROUTING CODES
IN THE UK NETWORK ARE NOT THE SAME AS THOSE DIALED BY THE CALLER,
THE PHREAKS HAD TO DISCOVER THEM BY 'PROBE AND LISTEN' TECHNIQUES
OR MORE COMMONLY KNOWN IN THE U.S.-- SCANNING. WHAT THEY DID WAS
PUT IN LIKELY SIGNALS AND LISTENED TO FIND OUT IF THEY SUCCEEDED.
THE RESULTS OF SCANNING WERE CIRCULATED TO OTHER PHREAKS.
DISCOVERING EACH OTHER TOOK TIME AT FIRST, BUT EVENTUALLY THE
PHREAKS BECAME ORGANIZED. THE "TAP" OF BRITAIN WAS CALLED
"UNDERCURRENTS" WHICH ENABLED BRITISH PHREAKS TO SHARE THE INFO ON
NEW NUMBERS, EQUIPMENT ETC. TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE BRITISH BRITISH
PHREAKS DID, THINK OF THE PHONE NETWORK IN THREE LAYERS OF LINES:
LOCAL, TRUNK, AND INTERNATIONAL.#IN THE UK, SUBSCRIBER TRUNK
DIALING (STD), IS THE MECHANISM WHICH TAKES A CALL FROM
THE LOCAL LINES AND (LEGITIMATELY) ELEVATES IT TO A TRUNK OR
INTERNATIONAL LEVEL.#THE UK PHREAKS FIGURED THAT A CALL AT TRUNK
LEVEL CAN BE ROUTED THROUGH ANY NUMBER OF EXCHANGES, PROVIDED THAT
THE RIGHT ROUTING CODES WERE FOUND AND USED CORRECTLY. THEY ALSO
HAD TO DISCOVER HOW TO GET FROM LOCAL TO TRUNK LEVEL EITHER WITHOUT
BEING CHARGED (WHICH THEY DID WITH A BLEEPER BOX) OR WITHOUT USING
(STD). CHAINING HAS ALREADY BEEN MENTIONED BUT IT REQUIRES LONG
STRINGS OF DIGITS AND SPEECH GETS MORE AND MORE FAINT AS THE CHAIN
GROWS, JUST LIKE IT DOES WHEN YOU STACK TRUNKS
- 55 -
BACK AND FORTH ACROSS THE U.S.#THE WAY THE SECURITY REPS SNAGGED
THE PHREAKS WAS TO PUT A SIMPLE 'PRINTERMETER' OR AS WE CALL IT: A
PEN REGISTER ON THE SUSPECTS LINE, WHICH SHOWS EVERY DIGIT DIALED
FROM THE SUBSCRIBERS LINE. THE BRITISH PREFER TO GET
ONTO THE TRUNKS RATHER THAN CHAINING. ONE WAY WAS TO DISCOVER
WHERE LOCAL CALLS USE THE TRUNKS BETWEEN NEIGHBORING EXCHANGES,
START A CALL AND STAY ON THE TRUNK INSTEAD OF RETURNING TO THE
LOCAL LEVEL ON REACHING THE DISTANT SWITCH. THIS AGAIN REQUIRED
EXHAUSTIVE DIALING AND MADE MORE WORK FOR TITAN; IT ALSO REVEALED
'FIDDLES', WHICH WERE INSERTED BY POST OFFICE ENGINEERS. WHAT
FIDDLING MEANS IS THAT THE ENGINEERS REWIRED THE EXCHANGES FOR
THEIR OWN BENEFIT. THE EQUIPMENT IS MODIFIED TO GIVE ACCESS TO A
TRUNK WITH OUT BEING CHARGED, AN OPERATION WHICH IS PRETTY EASY IN
STEP BY STEP (SXS) ELECTROMECHANICAL EXCHANGES, WHICH WERE
INSTALLED IN BRITAIN EVEN IN THE 1970S (NOTE: I KNOW OF A BACK
DOOR INTO THE CANADIAN SYSTEM ON A 4A CO., SO IF YOU ARE ON SXS OR
A 4A, TRY SCANNING 3 DIGIT EXCHANGES, IE: DIAL 999,998,997
ETC.#AND LISTEN FOR THE BEEP-KERCHINK, IF THERE ARE NO 3 DIGIT
CODES WHICH ALLOW DIRECT ACCESS TO A TANDEM IN YOUR LOCAL EXCHANGE
AND BYPASSES THE AMA SO YOU WON'T BE BILLED, NOT HAVE TO BLAST 2600
EVERY TIME YOU WISH TO BOX A CALL. A FAMOUS BRITISH 'FIDDLER'
REVEALED IN THE EARLY 1970S WORKED BY DIALING 173. THE CALLER THEN
ADDED THE TRUNK CODE OF 1 AND THE SUBSCRIBERS LOCAL NUMBER. AT
THAT TIME, MOST ENGINEERING TEST SERVICES BEGAN WITH 17X, SO THE
ENGINEERS COULD HIDE THEIR FIDDLES IN THE NEST OF SERVICE WIRES.
WHEN SECURITY REPS STARTED SEARCHING, THE FIDDLES WERE CONCEALED
BY TONES SIGNALLING: 'NUMBER UNOBTAINALBE' OR 'EQUIPMENT ENGAGED'
WHICH SWITCHED OFF AFTER A DELAY. THE NECESSARY RELAYS ARE SMALL
AND EASILY HIDDEN. THERE WAS ANOTHER SIDE TO PHREAKING IN THE UK
IN THE SIXTIES. BEFORE STD WAS WIDESPREAD, MANY 'ORDINARY' PEOPLE
WERE DRIVEN TO. OCCASIONAL PHREAKING FROM SHEER FRUSTRATION AT THE
INEFFICIENT OPERATOR CONTROLLED TRUNK SYSTEM. THIS CAME TO A HEAD
DURING A STRIKE ABOUT 1961 WHEN OPERATORS COULD NOT BE REACHED.
NOTHING COMPLICATED WAS NEEDED. MANY OPERATORS HAD BEEN IN THE
HABIT OF REPEATING THE CODES AS THEY DIALLED THE REQUESTED NUMBERS SO
PEOPLE SOON LEARNT THE NUMBERS THEY CALLED FREQUENTLY. THE ONLY
'TRICK' WAS TO KNOW WHICH EXCHANGES COULD BE DIALLED THROUGH TO
PASS ON THE TRUNK NUMBER.CALLERS ALSO NEEDED A PRETTY QUIET PLACE
TO DO IT, SINCE TIMING RELATIVE TO CLICKS WAS IMPORTANT THE MOST
FAMOUS TRIAL OF BRITISH PHREAKS WAS CALLED THE OLD BAILY TRIAL.
#WHICH STARTED ON 3 OCT. 1973.#WHAT THEY PHREAKS DID WAS TO DIAL
A SPARE NUMBER AT A LOCAL CALL RATE BUT INVOLVING A TRUNK TO
ANOTHER EXCHANGE THEN THEY SEND A 'CLEAR FORWARD' TO THEIR LOCAL
EXCHANGE, INDICATING TO IT THAT THE CALL IS FINISHED;BUT THE
DISTANT EXCHANGE DOESN'T REALIZE BECAUSE THE CALLER'S PHONE IS
STILL OFF THE HOOK. THEY NOW HAVE AN OPEN LINE INTO THE DISTANT
TRUNK EXCHANGE AND SENDS TO IT A 'SEIZE' SIGNAL: '1' WHICH PUTS HIM
ONTO ITS OUTGOING LINES NOW, IF THEY KNOW THE CODES, THE
WORLD IS OPEN TO THEM. ALL OTHER EXCHANGES TRUST HIS LOCAL
EXCHANGE TO HANDLE THE BILLING; THEY JUST INTERPRET THE TONES
PHREAKING THEY HEAR. MEAN WHILE, THE LOCAL EXCHANGE COLLECTS
- 56 -
ONLY FOR A LOCAL CALL. THE INVESTIGATORS DISCOVERED THE PHREAKS
HOLDING A CONFERENCE SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND SURROUNDED BY VARIOUS
PHONE EQUIPMENT AND BLEEPER BOXES, ALSO PRINTOUTS LISTING 'SECRET'
POST OFFICE CODES. (THEY PROBABLY GOT THEM FROM TRASHING?) THE
JUDGE SAID: "SOME TAKE TO HEROIN, SOME TAKE TO TELEPHONES" FOR THEM
PHONE PHREAKING WAS NOT A CRIME BUT A HOBBY TO BE SHARED WITH
PHELLOW ENTHUSIASTS AND DISCUSSED WITH THE POST OFFICE OPENLY OVER
DINNER AND BY MAIL. THEIR APPROACH AND ATTITUDE TO THE WORLDS
LARGEST COMPUTER, THE GLOBAL TELEPHONE SYSTEM, WAS THAT OF
SCIENTISTS CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS OR PROGRAMMERS AND ENGINEERS
TESTING PROGRAMS AND SYSTEMS. THE JUDGE APPEARED TO AGREE, AND
EVEN ASKED THEM FOR PHREAKING CODES TO USE FROM HIS LOCAL
EXCHANGE!!!
- 57 -
THE HISTORY OF ESS: by- < Lex Luthor >
Of all the new 1960s wonders of telephone technology -
satellites, ultra modern Traffic Service Positions (TSPS) for
operators, the picturephone, and so on - the one that gave Bell
Labs the most trouble, and unexpectedly became the greatest
development effort in Bell System's history, was the perfection
of an electronic switching system, or ESS. It may be recalled that
such a system was the specific end in view when the project that
had culminated in the invention of the transistor had been launched
back in the 1930s. After successful accomplishment of that planned
miracle in 1947-48, further delays were brought about by financial
stringency and the need for further development of the transistor
itself. In the early 1950s, a Labs team began serious work on
electronic switching. As early as 1955, Western Electric became
involved when five engineers from the Hawthorne works were assigned
to collaborate with the Labs on the project. The president of AT&T
in 1956, wrote confidently, "At Bell Labs, development of the new
electronic switching system is going full speed ahead. We are sure
this will lead to many improvements in service and also to greater
efficiency. The first service trial will start in Morris, Ill., in
1959." Shortly thereafter, Kappel said that the cost of the whole
project would probably be $45 million.
But it gradually became apparent that the development of a
commercially usable electronic switching system -in effect, a
computerized telephone exchange - presented vastly greater
technical problems than had been anticipated, and that,
accordingly, Bell Labs had vastly underestimated both the time
and the investment needed to do the job. The year 1959 passed
without the promised first trial at Morris, Illinois; it was
finally made in November 1960, and quickly showed how much more
work remained to be done. As time dragged on and costs mounted,
there was a concern at AT&T and some-thing approaching panic at
Bell Labs. But the project had to go forward; by this time the
investment was too great to be sacrificed, and in any case, forward
projections of increased demand for telephone service indicated
that within a phew years a time would come when, without the
quantum leap in speed and flexibility that electronic switching
would provide, the national network would be unable to meet the
demand. In November 1963, an all-electronic switching system went
into use at the Brown Engineering Company at Cocoa Beach, Florida.
But this was a small installation, essentially another test
installation, serving only a single company. Kappel's tone on the
subject in the 1964 annual report was, for him, an almost
apologetic: "Electronic switching equipment must be manufactured
in volume to unprecedented standards of reliability.... To turn out
the equipment economically and with good speed, mass production
methods must be developed; but, at the same time, there can be
no loss of precision..." Another year and millions of dollars
later, on May 30, 1965, the first commerical electric central
- 58 -
office was put into service at Succasunna, New Jersey. Even
at Succasunna, only 200 of the town's 4,300 subscribers
initially had the benefit of electronic switching's added
speed and additional services, such as provision for three
party conversations and automatic transfer of incoming calls.
But after that, ESS was on its way. In January 1966, the second
commercial installation, this one serving 2,900 telephones,
went into service in Chase, Maryland. By the end of 1967 there
were additional ESS offices in California, Connecticut, Minnesota,
Georgia, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania; by the end of 1970
there were 120 offices serving 1.8 million customers; and by 1974
there were 475 offices serving 5.6 million customers. The difference
between conventional switching and electronic switching is the
difference between "hardware" and "software"; in the former case,
maintenance is done on the spot, with screwdriver and pliers, while
in the case of electronic switching, it can be done remotely, by
computer, from a central point, making it possible to have only
one or two technicians on duty at a time at each switching center.
The development program, when the final figures were added up, was
found to have required a staggering four thousand man-years of work
at Bell Labs and to have cost not $45 million but $500 million!
- 59 -
PEN REGISTERING AND TRACING: By - XTC
PEN REGISTERING IS A SPECIAL DEVICE USED BY AT&T. THIS DEVICE
DECIPHERS THE TONES USED WHEN PHREAKING PHONE CALLS. THIS MEANS
THAT EACH TONE KEY PRESSED IS DECIPHERED IF YOU HAD A PEN REG-
ISTER ON YOUR LINE OR WERE BEING TRACED WITH A PEN REGISTER, EVERY
PHONE NUMBER YOU DIALED WOULD BE KNOWN. THAT MEANS EVERY TIME YOU
WOULD PHREAK A NUMBER NOT ONLY WOULD THE ACCESS NUMBER BE RECORDED,
BUT THE CODE BEING USED AND WHERE YOU CALLED TO! SO IF YOU KNOW YOU
HAVE A PEN REGISTER ON YOUR LINE THEN I WOULD AD- VISE YOU NOT TO
PHREAK! TRACING - THE FBI DOES NOT TRACE,THE POL- ICE DO NOT TRACE.
THE PHONE CO. TRACES. IF THE FBI WANTS A TRACE ON YOUR LINE THEY
SIMPLY CALL THE PHONE CO. THE FBI DOES NOT SIT UP ALL NIGHT TO
LISTEN IN ON YOUR PHONE. THEY DON'T TRACE FOR YEARS OR 6 MONTHS,
BUT JUST FOR A FEW DAYS AT A TIME IF AT ALL. THE POLICE TRACES THE
SAME WAY. IT COSTS TOO MUCH MONEY TO TRACE ALL THE COMPUTER
PHREAKERS AND HACKERS, SO THEY MERELY PICK ON A SELECT FEW. SO
TRACING ISN'T AS DANGEROUS AS IT SEEMS! THE PEOPLE THAT TELL YOU
DIFFERENT HAVE BEEN WATCHING TOO MANY LATE NIGHT FILMS! SO DON'T
GET TOO PARANOID!
INTERESTING THINGS TO DO ON STEP LINES: By - XTC
IF YOU HAVE STEP LINES IN YOUR PREFIX, (A GOOD WAY OF CHECKING TO
SEE IF YOU HAVE STEP IS TO LOOK AT THE PAYPHONES AROUND YOUR HO-
USE, IF THEY ARE ROTARY, THEN YOU HAVE STEP, IF NOT, YOUR OUTTA
LUCK.) FROM YOUR HOUSE DIAL "0" (THIS WILL NOT WORK AT A PAYPH-
ONE). YOU WILL HEAR A FEW "KERPLUNKS", IF YOU HIT THE HANG UP
BUTTON WHEN THE SECOND-TO-THE-LAST "KERPLUNK" IS HEARD THEN THE
OPERATOR WILL GET ON AND BE VERY CONFUSED. (I WILL TELL WHY SHE IS
CONFUSED IN JUST A SECOND, BUT FOR NOW JUST.) SAY THAT YOU ARE
TRYING TO COMPLETE A CALL WHEN SHE GOT ON. SHE WILL ASK FOR THE #
YOU ARE TRYING TO CALL. TELL HER THE NUMBER (LONG DISTANCE OF CO-
URSE), AND SHE WILL ASK YOU FOR YOUR NUMBER, PICK A NUMBER OUT OF
YOUR HEAD, (IT MUST BE IN YOUR PREFIX THOUGH), AND TELL HER IT. SHE
WILL BELIEVE YOU AND WILL CONNECT YOU WITH THE CHARGES CHA- RGED TO
THE NUMBER YOU SAID.(IF YOU DIDN'T HIT THE BUTTON AT THE CORRECT
TIME JUST TELL THE OPERATOR YOUR SORRY, YOU WERE TRY- ING TO DUST
THE PHONE OR SOME OTHER BULLSHIT LIKE THAT.) WHAT YOU DID WAS SCREW
UP THE AUTOMATIC NUMBER FIND THAT WAS BUILT IN TO THE FIRST STEP
LINES. THIS IS WHAT WOULD TELL THE OPERATOR YOUR # SO SHE COULD
BILL YOU IF SHE HAD TO COMPLETE A CALL FOR YOU. THE OP- ERATOR WILL
GET SOME GARBAGE ON HER SCREEN THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR NUMBER,
BUT SINCE YOU INTERRUPTED THAT PRO- CESS, IT LOOKS REALLY BIZZARE.
WHAT IS REALLY PHUN TO DO IS COM- PLAIN TO THE - OPERATOR THAT THIS
IS THE THIRD TIME TODAY THAT YOU HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO GET THROUGH
AND SHE WILL GIVE YOU SOME SOB STORY ABOUT "WE'RE SORRY, BUT WE'VE
HAD A COMPUTER MAL- FUNCTION AND IT IS BEING FIXED RIGHT NOW". I'M
KINDA SURE THAT THE PHONE COMPANY KNOWS NOTHING OF THIS. THE WORST
THING THAT COULD HAPPEN IS YOU GET A CALL ASKING WHY YOU'VE HUNG UP
ON THE OPERATOR SO MANY TI- MES, (IF YOU DID THIS ALOT, THAT IS).
JUST GIVE THEM SHIT ABOUT A BABY BROTHER JUST LEARNING HOW TO USE
THE PHONE, OR SOMETHING.
- 60 -
Phreaker's PhunHouse: By - Doc Silicon
The long awaited prequil to Phreaker's Guide has finally
arrived. Conceived from the boredom and loneliness that could only
be derived from: Doc Silicon. But now, he has returned in full
strength (after a small vacation) and is here to 'World Premiere'
the new files everywhere. Stay cool. This is the prequil to the
first one, so just relax. This is not made to be an exclusive ultra
elite file, so kinda calm down and watch in the background if you
are too cool for it...
/-/ Phreak Dictionary /-/
Here you will find some of the basic but necessary terms that
should be known by any phreak who wants to be respected at all...
Phreak [fr'eek]:1. The action of using mischevious and mostly
illegal ways in order to not pay for some sort of
telecommunications bill, order, transfer, or other service. It
often involves usage of highly illegal boxes and machines in order
to defeat the security that is set up to avoid this
sort of happening.
[fr'eaking]. v. 2. A person who uses the above methods of
destruction and chaos in order to make a better life for all. A
true phreaker will not not go against his fellows or narc on people
who have ragged on him or do anything termed to be dishonorable to
phreaks.
[fr'eek]. n. 3. A certain code or dialup useful in the action
of being a phreak. (Example: "I hacked a new metro phreak last
night.")
Switching System [Swich'ing sis'tem]: 1. There are 3 main
switching systems currently employed in the US, and a few other
systems will be mentioned as background. A) SxS: This system was
invented in 1918 and was employed in over half of the country until
1978. It is a very basic system that is a general waste of energy
and hard work on the linesman. A good way to identify
this is that it requires a coin in the phone booth before it will
give you a dial tone, or that no call waiting, call forwarding, or
any other such service is available. Stands for: Step by Step B)
XB: This switching system was first employed in 1978 in order to
take care of most of the faults of SxS switching. Not only is it
more efficient, but it also can support different services in
various forms. XB1 is Crossbar Version 1. That is very limited and
is hard to distinguish from SxS except by direct view of the wiring
involved. Next up was XB4, Crossbar Version 4. With this system,
some of the basic things like DTMF that were not available with SxS
can be accomplished. For the final stroke of XB, XB5 was created.
This is a service that can allow DTMF plus most 800 type services
(which were not always available...)
- 61 -
Stands for: Crossbar. C) ESS: A nightmare in telecom. In vivid
color, ESS is a pretty bad thing to have to stand up to. It is
quite simple to identify. Dialing 911 for emergencies, and ANI [see
ANI below] are the most common facets of the dread system. ESS has
the capability to list in a person's caller log what number was
called, how long the call took, and even the status of the
conversation (modem or otherwise.) Since ESS has been employed,
which has been very recently, it has gone through many kinds of
revisions. The latest system to date is ESS 11a, that is employed
in Washington D.C. for security reasons. ESS is truly trouble for
any phreak, because it is 'smarter' than the other systems. For
instance, if on your caller log they saw 50 calls to
1-800-421-9438, they would be able to do a CN/A [see Loopholes
below] on your number and determine whether you are subscribed to
that service or not. This makes most calls a hazard, because
although 800 numbers appear to be free, they are recorded on your
caller log and then right before you receive your bill it deletes
the billings for them. But before that they are open to inspection,
which is one reason why extended use of any code is dangerous under
ESS. Some of the boxes [see Boxing below] are unable to function in
ESS. It is generally a menace to the true phreak. Stands For:
Electronic Switching System. because they could appear on a filter
somewhere or maybe it is just nice to know them any ways. A) SSS:
Strowger Switching System. First non-operator system available. B)
WES: Western Electronics Switching. Used about 40 years ago with some
minor places out west.
Boxing [Boks'-ing]: 1) The use of personally designed boxes that
emit or cancel electronical impulses that allow simpler acting
while phreaking. Through the use of separate boxes, you can
accomplish most feats possible with or without the control of an
operator. 2) Some boxes and their functions are listed below. Ones
marked with '*' indicate that they are not operatable in ESS.
*Black Box: Makes it seem to the phone company that the phone
was never picked up. Blue Box: Emits a 2600hz tone that allows
you to do such things as stack a trunk line, kick the operator
off line, and others. Red Box: Simulates the noise of a quarter,
nickel, or dime being dropped into a payphone. Cheese Box: Turns
your home phone into a pay phone to throw off traces (a red box
is usually needed in order to call out.) *Clear Box: Gives you
a dial tone on some of the old SxS payphones without putting in
a coin. Beige Box: A simpler produced linesman's handset that
allows you to tap into phone lines and extract by eavesdropping,
or crossing wires, etc. Purple Box: Makes all calls made out from
your house seem to be local calls.
ANI [ANI]: 1) Automatic Number Identification. A service
available on ESS that allows a phone service [see Dialups below] to
record the number that any certain code was dialed from along with
the number that was called and print both of these on the customer
bill. 950 dialups [see Dialups below] are all designed
- 62 -
just to use ANI. Some of the services do not have the proper
equipment to read the ANI impulses yet, but it is impossible to see
which is which without being busted or not busted first.
Dialups [dy'l'ups]: 1) Any local or 800 extended outlet that
allows instant access to any service such as MCI, Sprint, or AT&T
that from there can beused by handpicking or using a program to
reveal other peoples codes which can then be used moderately until
they find out about it and you must switch to another code
(preferably before they find out about it.) 2) Dialups are
extremely common on both senses. Some dialups reveal the company
that operates them as soon as you hear the tone. Others are much
harder and some you may never be able to identify. A small list of
dialups:1-800-421-9438 (5 digit codes) 1-800-547-6754 (6 digit
codes) 1-800-345-0008 (6 digit codes) 1-800-734-3478 (6 digit
codes) 1-800-222-2255 (5 digit codes) 3) Codes: Codes are very
easily accessed procedures when you call a dialup. They will
give you some sort of tone. If the tone does not end in 3 seconds,
then punch in the code and immediately following the code, the
number you are dialing but strike the '1' in the beginning out
first. If the tone does end, then punch in the code when the tone
ends. Then, it will give you another tone. Punch in the number you
are dialing, or a '9'. If you punch in a '9' and the tone stops,
then you messed up a little. If you punch in a tone and the tone
continues, then simply dial then number you are calling without the
'1'. 4) All codes are not universal. The only type that I know of
that is truly universal is Metrophone. Almost every major city has
a local Metro dialup (for Philadelphia, (215)351-0100/0126) and
since the codes are universal, almost every phreak has used them
once or twice. They do not employ ANI in any outlets that I know
of, so feel free to check through your books and call 555-1212 or,
as a more devious manor, subscribe yourself. Then, never use your
own code. That way, if they check up on you due to your caller log,
they can usually find out that you are subscribed. Not only that
but you could set a phreak hacker around that area and just let it
hack away, since they usually group them, and, as a bonus, you will
have their local dialup. 5) 950's. They seem like a perfectly cool
phreakers dream. They are free from your house, from payphones,
from everywhere, and they host all of the major long distance
companies (950-1044 <MCI>, 950-1077 <Sprint>, 950-1088
<Skylines>, 950-1033 <Us Telecom>.) Well, they aren't. They were
designed for ANI. That is the point, end of discussion.
A phreak dictionary. If you remember all of the things contained
on that file up there, you may have a better chance of doing
whatever it is you do. This next section is maybe a little more
interesting...
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Blue Box Plans:
---------------
These are some blue box plans, but first, be warned, there have
been 2600hz tone detectors out on operator trunk lines since XB4.
The idea behind it is to use a 2600hz tone for a few very naughty
functions that can really make your day lighten up. But first, here
are the plans, or the heart of the file:
700 : 1 : 2 : 4 : 7 : 11 :
900 : + : 3 : 5 : 8 : 12 :
1100 : + : + : 6 : 9 : KP :
1300 : + : + : + : 10 : KP2 :
1500 : + : + : + : + : ST :
: 700 : 900 :1100 :1300 :1500 :
Stop! Before you diehard users start piecing those little tone
tidbits together, there is a simpler method. If you have an
Apple-Cat with a program like Cat's Meow IV, then you can generate
the necessary tones, the 2600hz tone, the KP tone, the KP2 tone,
and the ST tone through the dial section. So if you have that I
will assume you can boot it up and it works, and I'll do you the
favor of telling you and the other users what to do with the blue
box now that you have somehow constructed it.
The connection to an operator is one of the most well known
and used ways of having fun with your blue box. You simply dial a
TSPS (Traffic Service Positioning Station, or the operator you get
when you dial '0') and blow a 2600hz tone through the line. Watch
out! Do not dial this direct! After you have done that, it is quite
simple to have fun with it. Blow a KP tone to start a call, a ST
tone to stop it, and a 2600hz tone to hang up. Once you have
connected to it, here are some fun numbers to call with it:
0-700-456-1000 Teleconference (free, because you are the
operator!) (Area code)-101 Toll Switching (Area code)-121 Local
Operator (hehe) (Area code)-131 Information (Area code)-141 Rate &
Route (Area code)-181 Coin Refund Operator (Area code)-11511
Conference operator (when you dial 800-544-6363)
Well, those were the tone matrix controllers for the blue box
and some other helpful stuff to help you to start out with. But
those are only the functions with the operator. There are other
k-fun things you can do with it...
More advanced Blue Box Stuff: Oops. Small mistake up there. I
forgot tone lengths. Um, you blow a tone pair out for up to 1/10 of
a second with another 1/10 second for silence between the digits.
KP tones should be sent for 2/10 of a second. One way to
confuse the 2600hz traps is to send pink noise over the channel
(for all of you that have decent BSR equalizers, there is major
pink noise in there...) Using the operator functions is the use of
the 'inward' trunk line. That is working it from the inside. From
the 'outward' trunk, you can do such things as make
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emergency breakthrough calls, tap into lines, busy all of the lines
in any trunk (called 'stacking'), enable or disable the TSPS's, and
for some 4a systems you can even re-route calls to anywhere. All
right. The one thing that every complete phreak guide should not be
without is blue box plans, since they were once a vital part of
phreaking. Another thing that every
complete file needs is a complete listing of all of the 800 numbers
around so you can have some more fun.
/-/ 800 Dialup Listings /-/
1-800-345-0008 (6) 1-800-547-6754 (6) 1-800-245-4890 (4)
1-800-327-9136 (4) 1-800-526-5305 (8) 1-800-858-9000 (3)
1-800-437-9895 (7) 1-800-245-7508 (5) 1-800-343-1844 (4)
1-800-322-1415 (6) 1-800-437-3478 (6) 1-800-325-7222 (6)
All right, set Your Hacker on those numbers and have a fuck of a
day. That is enough with 800 codes, by the time this gets around to
you I dunno what state those codes will be in, but try them all out
anyways and see what you get. On some 800 services now, they have
an operator who will answer and ask you for your code, and then
your name. Some will switch back and forth between voice and tone
verification, you can never be quite sure which you will be up against.
Armed with this knowledge you should be having a pretty good
time phreaking now. But class isn't over yet, there are still a
couple important rules that you should know. If you hear continual
clicking on the line, then you should assume that an operator is
messing with something, maybe even listening in on you. It is a
good idea to call someone back when the phone starts doing that. If
you were using a code, use a different code and/or service to call
him back. A good way to detect if a code has gone bad or not is to
listen when the number has been dialed. If the code is bad you will
probably hear the phone ringing more clearly and more quickly than
if you were using a different code. If someone answers voice to it
then you can immediately assume that it is an operative for whatever
company you are using. The famed '311311' code for Metro is one of
those. You would have to be quite stupid to actually respond,
because whoever you ask for the operator will always say 'He's not
in right now, can I have him call you back?' and then they will ask
for your name and phone number. Some of the more sophisticated
companies will actually give you a carrier on a line that is
supposed to give you a carrier and then just have garbage flow
across the screen like it would with a bad connection. That is a
feeble effort to make you think that the code is still working and
maybe get you to dial someone's voice... a good test for the carrier
trick is to dial a number that will give you a carrier that you have
never dialed with that code before, that will allow you to determine
whether the code is good or not. For our next section, a lighter
look at some of the things that a phreak should not be without. A
- 65 -
vocabulary. A few months ago, it was a quite strange world for the
modem people out there. But now, a phreaker's vocabulary is
essential if you wanna make a good impression on people when you
post what you know about certain subjects.
/-/ Vocabulary /-/
- Do not misspell except certain exceptions:
phone -> fone
freak -> phreak
- Never substitute 'z's for 's's. (i.e. codez -> codes)
- Never leave many characters after a post (i.e. Hey
dudes!#!@#@!#!@)
- NEVER use the 'k' prefix (k-kool, k-rad, k-whatever)
- Do not abbreviate. (I got lotsa wares w/ docs)
- Never substitute '0' for 'o' (r0dent, l0zer).
- Forget about ye old upper case, it looks ruggyish.
All right, that was to relieve the tension of what is being
drilled into your minds at the moment.. now, however, back to the
teaching course. Here are some things you should know about fone
and billings for phones, etc.
LATA: Local Access Transference Area. Some people who live in
large cities or areas may be plagued by this problem. For Inst-
ance, let's say you live in the 215 area code under the 542 pre
(Ambler, Fort Washington). If you went to dial in a basic Metro
code from that area, for instance, 351-0100, that might not be
counted under unlimited local calling because it is out of your
LATA.For some LATA's, you have to dial a '1' without the area code
before you can dial the phone number. That could prove a hassle for
us all if you didn't realize you would be billed for that sort of
call. In that way, sometimes, it is better to be safe than sorry
and phreak. The Caller Log: In ESS regions, for every household
around, the phone company has something on you called a Caller Log.
This shows every single number that you dialed, and things can be
arranged so it showed every number that was calling to you. That's
one main disadvantage of ESS, it is mostly computerized so a number
scan could be done like that quite easily. Using a dialup is an
easy way to screw that, and is something worth remembering. Anyways,
with the caller log, they check up and see what you dialed. Hmm...
you dialed 15 different 800 numbers that month. Soon they find that
you are subscribed to none of those companies. But that is not the
only thing. Most people would imagine "But wait! 800 numbers don't
show up on my phone bill!". To those people, it is a nice thought,
but 800 numbers are picked up on the caller log until right before
they are sent off to you. So they can check right up on you before
they send it away and can note the fact that you fucked up slightly
and called one too many 800 lines. Right now, after all of that, you
should have a pretty good idea of how to grow up as a good phreak.
Follow these guidelines, don't show off!
- 66 -
Telenet: By - Doc Silicon
It seems that not many of you know that Telenet is connected to
about 80 computer-networks in the world. No, I don't mean 80 nodes,
but 80 networks with thousands of unprotected computers. When you
call your local Telenet-gateway, you can only call those computers
which accept reverse-charging-calls. If you want to call computers
in foreign countries or computers in USA which do not accept
R-calls, you need a Telenet-ID. Did you ever notice that you can
type ID XXXX when being connected to Telenet? You are then asked
for the password. If you have such a NUI (Network-User-ID) you can
call nearly every host connected to any computer-network in the
world. Here are some examples: 026245400090184 :Is a VAX in Germany
(Username: DATEXP and leave mail for CHRIS !!!) 0311050500061
:Is the Los Alamos Integrated computing network (One of the hosts
connected to it is the DNA (Defense Nuclear Agency)!!!) 1230197000016
:Is a BBS in New Zealand 024050256 :Is the S-E-Bank in Stockholm,
Sweden (Login as GAMES !!!) 02284681140541 :CERN in Geneva in
Switzerland (one of the biggest nuclear research centers in the
world) Login as GUEST 0234212301161 :A Videotex-standard system.
Type OPTEL to get in and use the ID 999_ with the password 9_
0242211000001 :University of Oslo in Norway (Type LOGIN 17,17 to
play the Multi-User-Dungeon !) 0425130000215 :Something like ITT
Dialcom, but this one is in Israel ! ID HELP with password HELP
works fine with security level 3 0310600584401 :Is the Washington
Post News Service via Tymnet (Yes, Tymnet is connected to Telenet,
too !) ID and Password is: PETER You can read the news of the next
day !
The prefixes are as follows:
02624 is Datex-P in Germany
02342 is PSS in England
03110 is Telenet in USA
03106 is Tymnet in USA
02405 is Telepak in Sweden
04251 is Isranet in Israel
02080 is Transpac in France
02284 is Telepac in Switzerland
02724 is Eirpac in Ireland
02704 is Luxpac in Luxembourg
05252 is Telepac in Singapore
04408 is Venus-P in Japan
and so on... Some of the countries have more than one packet-
switching-network (USA has 11, Canada has 3, etc). OK. That should
be enough for the moment. As you see most of the passwords are very
simple. This is because they must not have any fear of hackers.
Only a few German hackers use these networks. Most of the computers
are absolutely easy to hack !!! So, try to find out some Telenet-ID's!
- 67 -
Bad as Shit: By - The Grim Reaper
Recently, a telephone fanatic in the northwest made an
interesting discovery. He was exploring the 804 area code
(Virginia) and found out that the 840 exchange did something
strange. In the vast majority of cases, in fact in all of the
cases except one, he would get a recording as if the exchange
didn't exist. However, if he dialed 804-840 and four rather
predictable numbers, he got a ring! After one or two rings,
somebody picked up. Being experienced at this kind of thing, he
could tell that the call didn't "supe", that is, no charges were
being incurred for calling this number. (Calls that get you to an
error message, or a special operator, generally don't supervise.)
A female voice, with a hint of a Southern accent said, "Operator,
can I help you?" "Yes," he said, "What number have I reached?"
"What number did you dial, sir?" He made up a number that was
similar. "I'm sorry that is not the number you reached." Click.
He was fascinated. What in the world was this? He knew he was
going to call back, but before he did, he tried some more
experiments. He tried the 840 exchange in several other area
codes. In some, it came up as a valid exchange. In others, exactly
the same thing happened -- the same last four digits, the
same Southern belle. Oddly enough, he later noticed, the areas
worked in seemed to travel in a beeline from Washington DC to
Pittsburgh, PA. He called back from a payphone. "Operator, can I
help you?" "Yes, this is the phone company. I'm testing this line
and we don't seem to have an identification on your circuit. What
office is this, please?" "What number are you trying to reach?"
"I'm not trying to reach any number. I'm trying to identify this
circuit." "I'm sorry, I can't help you." "Ma'am, if I don't get an
ID on this line, I'll have to disconnect it. We show no record of
it here." "Hold on a moment, sir." After about a minute, she came
back. "Sir, I can have someone speak to you. Would you give me
your number, please?" He had anticipated this and he had the
payphone number ready. After he gave it, she said, "Mr. XXX will
get right back to you." "Thanks." He hung up the phone. It rang.
INSTANTLY! "Oh my God," he thought, "They weren't asking for my
number -- they were confirming it!" "Hello," he said, trying to
sound authoritative. "This is Mr. XXX. Did you just make an
inquiry to my office concerning a
phone number?" "Yes. I need an identi--" "What you need is
advice. Don't ever call that number again. Forget you ever knew
it." At this point our friend got so nervous he just hung up. He
expected to hear the phone ring again but it didn't. Over the next
few days he racked his brains trying to figure out what the number
was. He knew it was something big -- that was pretty certain at
this point. It was so big that the number was programmed into
every central office in the country. He knew this because if he
tried to dial any other number in that exchange, he'd get a local
error message from his CO, as if the exchange didn't exist. It
finally came to him. He had an uncle who worked in a federal
agency. He had a feeling that this was goverment related
- 68 -
and if it was, his uncle could probably find out what it was. He
asked the next day and his uncle promised to look into the matter.
The next time he saw his uncle, he noticed a big change in his
manner. He was trembling. "Where did you get that number?!"
he shouted. "Do you know I almost got fired for asking about it?!?
They kept wanting to know where I got it." Our friend couldn't
contain his excitement. "What is it?" he pleaded. "What's the
number?!" "IT'S THE PRESIDENT'S BOMB SHELTER!" He never called
the number after that. He knew that he could probably cause quite
a bit of excitement by calling the number and saying something like,
"The weather's not good in Washington. We're coming over for a
visit." But our friend was smart. he knew that there were some
things that were better off unsaid and undone.
- 69 -

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