textfiles/phreak/BOXES/esquire2.phk

			 Secrets of the Little Blue Box
				   (Part II)


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 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 signaling any other tandem in any other toll
switching office on the continent, either directly one-to-one or by programming
a roundabout route 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" our 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 interewted 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 the 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 this 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
indicates 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 notices the
2600 cycles are coming over the line again and assumes that New Orleans has hung
up because the trunk is whistling as if idle.  The the L.A.  800 number.  Butas
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 and 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 to you and starts 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 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
these 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 you 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.  when you send
multi-frequency beep tones off 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
users.

  "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 that 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 befor they know how to use them.  Ma Bell is in
trouble."

  And if a blue-box operator or a cassette-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-F-ers"(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 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 thest 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, this 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 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.  Sustems.  That's my bag.  *he
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.  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 built the little device.  Only I built it wrong
and Ma Bell found out.	Ma Bell can detect things like that.  Ma Bell knows.  So
I'm strictly out 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 an area code a thousand miles north 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
thest numbers occur in consecutive pairs, such as 302 956-0041 and 956-0042.
Well certain phone phreaks discovered that if two people from anywhere in the
country dial those 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.

  "Your 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 stacking and unstacking?  Give me your phone number.  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" he sounds like he is smacking
his lips.)

  "How do you like the connection you're on now?" the Captain asks me.  "It's a
raw tandem.  A raw tandem.  I'm going to show you what it's like to stack up.
Blow off.  Land in a faraway 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 a line tie on my
switchboard here, and I'm gonna let you hear me stack and unstack tandems.
Listen to this.  I'm gonna blow your mind."

  First I hear a super rapid-fire pulsing of t(e 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 po 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 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 disolving away.

  The Captain is pleased.  "You believe me now, don't you?  Do you know what I'd
like to do?  I'd 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.



END OF PART II

		  

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