200 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
200 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
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\ A BOM SQUAD RELEASE /
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/ The History Of \
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\ Hacking & Phreaking /
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\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
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By Raven
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-=-=-=-=-=-
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Okay boys and girls, children of all ages...Here's a
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revolutionary idear....The announcements foist!
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-=-=-=-=-=-
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The file we released on smashing up cop cars and getting
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away, ya know? Well, don't try it unless you got half a ton
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of cocaine in the back seat, and a billion bucks on the dash!
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The cops are wise, and are liable to open fire on you once
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you start pulling backwards, so, don't attempt it unless you
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have no other options. Another thing - now they're air bags
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are quicker-draining, so they can start the chase almost as
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soon as you are off.
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-> And Now, On With The Show! <-
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Okay, folks...First of all, I wrote this because, well, a lot
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of you fellow hacker/phreakers out there do all yer
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stuff, but don't know your roots. Hacking and phreaking have
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been around for over 20 years now. So,
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without further adue, I present, the History Of Hacking,
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and Phreaking!
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-=- The History Of Hacking & Phreaking -=-
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Believe it or not, but hacking and phreaking have been
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around since the '60s. Yep. Hacking is a legacy! Phreaking
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came around some time about 10 years later.
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-The 60's Hacker-
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These were back in the days when a teenager couldn't
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even buy a computer (because of price), much less fit it in
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his house. The 'hackers' were the people the sysop's of
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lamer PD boards would have you believe - people who spent
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lots of time with their computer (hacking away at the
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keyboard).
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The true hackers came about when Massachusetts Institute
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of Technology employed some nerds to do some artificial
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intelligence and computer work for them. These guys actually
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created the models for the terminal your working on right
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now. They were the true and original programmers and
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engineers.
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Anyhow, these guys were working on a project called MAC
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(Multiple-Access Computer, Machine-Aided Cognition, or Man
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Against Computers...Take yer pick). All goes well as these
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guys write some basic programs, build operation systems, and
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play 4 color chess games, until the MAC programmers go public
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with a computer time sharing program. The first BBS, and it
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even had over 100 nodes!
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Of course, only other guys with main frames could access
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this thing (i.e. - the government, other big schools, and big
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companies). These sysops who worked at MIT did their best to
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control the badly maintained MAC system, but the hoards of
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users cluttered up everything.
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Then, something magical happened. A man called John
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McCarthy, Ph.D., crashed the MAC system. Soon, others took
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sport in crashing this international network. Companies were
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able to take place in a crude form of industrial espionage on
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the MAC buy 'eavesdropping' on rival's E-Mail, and those
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cheap cardboard punch cards (the first computer disks) were
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always being corrupted by batch-file viruses. Hacking is
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born.
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However, crashing the system and all other 'evil'
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activities were encouraged. From them, sysops learned from
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mistakes, and the hackers took place in the hackers'
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obsession - the desire to learn as much as possible about a
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system.
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-The 70's Hacker/Phreaker-
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The 70's were a magical decade, and a flying leap for
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phone fraud. The first half of the 70's was like the 60's in
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respect to hacking. In the second half, hacking escalated
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into 80's hacking (see below).
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Besides hacking, though, the 70's produced the phone
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phreaks. Phreaking was born from the non-existent womb of a
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blind child from Tennessee named Joe Engressia. Joe was one
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of the rare people born with perfect pitch. Because of that
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gift, Joe was able to manipulate some of the most
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sophisticated and widespread technology in the world.
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Joe enjoyed the phone system. Being a curious 8 year
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old, he called recorded messages all over the world, because
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it was free, and is was a good past time. One day, he was
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listening to a message and whistling. When he hit a certain
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tone, the message clicked off. You or I might have hung up,
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but curious 8 year olds don't.
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Joe fooled around with other numbers and the same pitch,
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and found he could switch off any recorded message. Joe
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called his local phone company, and wanted to know why this
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happened. He didn't understand the explanation given, but he
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did realize that he had stumbled on to a whole new world to
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explore.
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How was Joe able to do this? Joe had stumbled onto the
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multifrequency system (known as MF to phreakers world wide).
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The purpose of this system was to do most of the the job a
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human could do, but done cheaper and quicker by a machine.
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Joe used this system by whistling the right pitches at
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the right times to get free calls. Of course, he never
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wanted to hurt the phone company. He loved the phone
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company. It was merely curiosity which caused him to do this
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all.
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Joe phreaked all the way into college (he was in college
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around the early 70's). While phreaking free calls back home
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for some friends, he was caught. Joe's case was a world wide
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publicity case (beginning first with an article in Esquire in
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1971). Soon, he received calls from phreaks world wide
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asking advice on certain pitches. Joe Engressia had become
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the phounding phather of phreaks.
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Several years before, in 1954, the phone company made a
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large mistake. They printed all the MF codes in their
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Technical Journal, a book which was easily obtained then, but
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has not been released to the public in over 15 years because
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of the damage phreaks could do with it. Phreaks learned the
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MF, and began using everything from their mouths to pipe
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organs to phreak calls.
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Then, the most ironic thing of all aided phreakers.
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John Draper, an air force technician stationed over seas
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discovered that if a toy whistle in boxes of Cap'n Crunch had
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a hole covered up, it produced a pure 2600 cycle tone, the
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exact pitch needed for a free call anywhere (at least it used
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to be). Soon, Draper was calling other phreaks all over the
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world. Paris, Peking, London, New York and more.
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Using his 2600 cycle whistle and other tools of the
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trade, Draper set up a phreak underground. It was a mass
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node 'party-line' in which many phreaks talked to one another
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at one time. In the throne was Cap'n Crunch - John Draper's
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handle.
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The phreakers exchanged knowledge, and soon combined
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their ideas to build the blue box. The blue box can reproduce
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any MF pitch. The whole thing came together in October,
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1971, in Esquire magazine. Ron Rosenbaum exposed the
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phreaking world from Joe to Crunch in one article called
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"Secrets Of The Little Blue Box".
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Rosenbaum distorted the phreaking world greatly.
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According to him, Crunch had a van which was chock-full of
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electronics. Crunch would drive around the country side,
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going from pay phone to pay phone, stealing cash from the
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coin box for money, and placing calls to phreaker friends.
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Occasionally, Crunch would call his 'mentor', Joe, for
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advice. Nah. I don't think so. Rosenbaum glorified the
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phreaking world, making Crunch a romantic hero.
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Draper/Crunch was arrested, convicted, and did time.
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While in the big house, several mafia inmates tried to
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recruit him into a commercial blue-box front. Draper
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declined, and they knocked out a few of his teeth, and broke
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his back.
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After leaving prison, Draper quit phreaking, and began
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programming. Last the world heard, he was head of a
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programming division of Apple.
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-The 80's Hacker-
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During the 1980's the hacker population probably went up
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1000-fold. Why? For several reasons. The first being that
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the personal computer and clones were made available to the
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public at cheap prices. People could afford to buy a
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terminal and set up a BBS. And, where you find BBS's, you
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find hackers.
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The second, and probably biggest reason was the movie
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WarGames. WarGames displayed hacking as a glamourous
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profession. It made hacking sound easy. I once heard that
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the estimate of hackers in the US increased by 600% after
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WarGames. Modem users also increased, but only by a mere
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1200%. This made hacking easy, though, because it was also
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estimated that one third of "WarGames Generation Hackers" had
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the password 'Joshua'. If you have seen the movie, you know
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that that name had some significance. Many hackers didn't
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like WarGames, though. They thought it made hacking sound
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like a pansy thing to do. To non-hackers, though, WarGames
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was great.
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The third reason is because of the mass publicity
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surround WarGames and hacking. If we had a controlled media,
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probably the only hackers in the USA would be spies and
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corporate computer techs. The media increased the hacker
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population by a lot, also.
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-The Hacker of The 90's and Beyond-
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Hacking of the 90's have basically been crashers of
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BBS's and company boards. There have been a few virus-smiths
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around. Piracy is always around. Who knows what the future
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brings in the world of hacking, phreaking, and anarchy?
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