textfiles/phreak/PHREAKING/euroblue.phk

File: A HISTORY OF BRITISH PHREAKING


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		 $   The History Of British Phreaking  $

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With thanks to Peter McIvers for the list of frequencies mentioned later in

this phile.



NOTE: the British Post Office, is the U.S. equivelent 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 reciever-rest for 1/2 second. 

This flashing initiated the 'clear forward' signal, leaving the caller with an 

open line into the Toll A exchange. He could thjen dial 018, which forwarded 

him to the trunk exchange- at that time, the first long distance exchange in 

Britain- and foll ow it with the code for the distant exchange to which he 

would be connect ed 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 ahold of: Atkinson's "Telephony and Systems Technology".



   The following are timing and the frequencies for boxing in the UK and other 

foreign countries. Special thanks to Peter McIvers for the phollowing inpho:



British "bleeper" boxes have the vaery same layout as U.S. blue boxes. The 

frequencies are different, though.  They use two sets of frequencies, forward 

and backward.  Forward signals are sent out by the bleeper box; the backward 

signals may be ignored (it's sort of like using full duplex).  The frequencies 

are as follows:



U.S.:

US:	     700    900    1100   1300	 1500	1700

Forward:    1380   1500    1620   1740	 1860	1980 Hz

Backward:   1140   1020    900	   780	  660	 540 Hz



for example, change the 900 Hz potentiometers in your box to 1500 Hz. All 

numbers 1-0 (10) are in the same order as in an American box. The ones after 

this are thier codes for operator 11, operator 12, spare 13, spare 14, and 15. 

One of these is KP, one (probably 15) is Star; it won't be too hard to figure 

out. The signals should carry -11.5dBm +/- 1dB onto the line; the frequencies 

should be within +/- 4Hz (as is the British equipment). Also, the 1VF system is

still in operation in parts of the U.K. This would encode all signals 1 to 16 as binary numbers; for instance, a five is 0101.	There are six intervals per 

digit, each 50ms long r a total of 300ms.  First is a start pulse of 2280 for 

50ms.  Then, using the example of five (0101), there is a 50ms pause, a 50ms 

pulse of 2280, a 50ms pause, and a 50ms pulse of 2280.	Finally, there is a 

50ms pause that signals the end of the digit.  The frequency tolerance on the 

2280 Hz is +/- 0.3%; it is sent at -6 +/- 1dBm.  An idle line is signaled by 

the presence of a 3825Hz tone for more than 650ms. This must be within 4Hz.



France uses the same box codes as the US, with an additional 1900Hz 

acknowledgement signal, at -8.7 +/- 1dBm per frequency.



Spain uses a 2 out of 5 mf code (same frequencies as US), with a 1700 Hz 

acknowledge signal.



Other places using the 1VF system are:

Australia, 2280Hz +/-6Hz, 35ms/digit at -6dB.

Germany, France: same as Australia; also, some 1VF systems in the UK.

Switzerland: same as Australia, only it uses 3000Hz, not 2280.

Sweeden: same as above, but at 2400Hz.

Spain: some parts use 1VF with 2500Hz.



There is one other major system: the 2VF system.  In this system, each digit is

35ms long.  The number is encoded in binary as with the 1VF system.  Using the 

example of five (0101), here's how the American 2VF system was sent:

2400 pulse, pause, 2040 pulse, pause, 2400 pulse, pause, 2040 pulse, pause. The

digits and pauses are all 35ms long, for a total of 280ms per digit. Other 

countries are still using a similar high/low pair with the same timings.  Some 

parts of Italy use the 1VF system with 2040Hz; some use the 2VF system with 

2040 and 2400 (same as original US) Hz. The Netherlands uses a 2VF system with 

2400 and 2500 Hz pulses. With the 2VF system, all frequencies should be within

2Hz.



Also, here are some specs for American phone equipment:

Dial Tone: 350+440Hz, -17.5 to -14.5 dBm/tone.

Off-Hook (ROH): 1400+2060+2450+2600(!) on/off 5 times per second

Busy: 480+620Hz; solow busy: 0.5 +/- 0.05 sec = 1 period

(about twice a second), at -28.5 to -22.5 dBm/tone.



Ring: 440+480 Hz at -23.5 to -20.5 dBm/tone.

A ring is modulated at 20 +/- 3Hz, 2sec on, 4sec off.



Call waiting: 440Hz, on 1 second.



Recorder Connection: 1400Hz, beeps every 15minutes.

Multiparty line ring: sam% frequency and modulation as ring, but 1sec on, 2sec 

off (twice as fast).



  Now, back to British Phreaking: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 number s 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 evenutally 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

netowrk in three layers of lines: Local, trunk, and international. In the UK, 

Subcriber 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 back and forth accross 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 thier 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 thier 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 thier 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 

they hear. Mean while, the local exchange collects 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 enthusists and discussed 

with the Post Office openly over dinner and by mail. Their approach and 

attitude to the worlds larges computer, the global telephone system, was that 

of scientist s conducting experiments or programmers and engineers testing 

programs and systems. The judge apeared to agree, and even asked them for 

phreaking codes to use from his local exchange!!!



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