textfiles/phreak/PHREAKING/histphre.txt

THE HISTORY OF PHREAKING
------------------------

DID YOU KNOW THAT PHREAKING STARTED FROM THE MOST UNLIKELY SOURCE...... CAP'N
CRUNCH CEREAL!

YES, IN THE 1960'S A TOY WHISTLE WAS PLACED IN THE FAMOUS CEREAL.
UNFORTUNATELY (NOT FOR US), THE WHISTLE GENERATED 2,600 CYCLE-TONE, DUDE! A
YOUNG MAN WHO HAD JUST ENTERED THE USAF AS A RADIO TECH., WAS FASCINATED WHEN
HE DISCOVERED THAT BY BLOWING THE WHISTLE INTO THE FONE AFTER DIALING ANY
LONG-DISTANCE # AND HEARING THE DIS-CONNECT SIGNAL, THE TRUNK WOULD REMAIN
OPEN WITHOUT TOLL CHARGES ACCOUNTING, AND FROM THEN ON, ANY NUMBER COULD BE
DIALED REPEATEDLY. 800 #'S (INWATS) , WERE LATER USED AS THE STARTER CALL TO
AVOID ANY CHARGES. HE USED THIS TO CALL HOME WHILE STATIONED IN ENGLAND. 
THE CAP'N PRACTICED FOR YEARS. HE REPORTEDLY WOULD PLACE CALLS AROUND THE
WORLD TO HIMSELF. HE WOULD THEN TALK AND HERE HIMSELF 20 SEC. LATER. HE WENT
ON TO DISCOVER THE OPERATOR CODES INCLUDING AUTO-RELAY (OPERATOR INTERRUPT, OR
VERIFY BUSY). THUS, EAVESDROPPING INTO CONVERSATIONS. HE CLAIMED TO LISTEN IN
ON THE FOLLOWING:
  
1. PRES. OF THE USA

2. FBI WHEN IT WAS AFTER PATTY HEARST

3. THE SECT. OF DEFENSE

   AUTOVON. (EXPLAINED IN ANOTHER VOL.)

CAP'N CRUNCH WAS THRUST INTO THE SPOTLIGHT WITH AN ARTICLE IN ESQUIRE.
THE TERM "BLUE BOX" CAME ABOUT BECAUSE THE FIRST ONE THAT WAS CAPTURED WAS
THAT COLOR. THE CAP'N SOON WENT BEYOND THE SIMPLE WHISTLE TO MORE COMPLICATED
DEVICES.

THOUSANDS OF PHREAKS CHANCED UPON AN UNUSED TELEX TEST BOARD TRUNK LINE IN A
4A SWITCHING MACHINE IN VANCOUVER. DIALING AREA CODE 604 FOLLOWED BY 2111
PLACED YOU IN AN INTERNATIONAL PARTY LINE.

SOON MORE SOPHISTICATED BOXES FOLLOWED. IN '77, THE PHONE COMP. INSTALLED THE
FIRST OF THEIR MORE SOPH. EQUIP. IT HAS INCREASED THE RISK, BUT BY NO MEANS
STOPPED IT. BELL NOW HAS A SYSTEM THAT WILL PRODUCE A RECORDED VOICE TELLIN YA
TO STOP, RECORDS PART OF CONVERSATION,  AND BILLS THE CALL TO THE NUMBER.
THOSE NUMBERS ARE THEN PRINTED OUT WITH THE TIME AND DATE.

BELL NOW HAS 74 CENTRALIZED TICKET INVESTIGATION (CTI). ONE OF THESE ALONE
PERFORMS 7000 INVESTIGATIONS A DAY.

CRUNCH WAS CAUGHT A NUMBER OF TIMES, INCLUDING A TOP SECRET MANUAL IN HIS
CLOSET DESCRIBING THE NCIC. (NATIONAL CRIME INFORMATION CENTER: COVERED
LATER). AFTER 3 CONVICTIONS AND A FEW YEARS IN JAIL, HE PACKED IT UP FOR A JOB
IN A SOFTWARE COMPANY OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE THAT?
SOMEWHERE, SOMETIME, I HAVE AN EERIE FEELING THAT HE IS OUT THERE.
(Ed. note.  Captain Crunch went to work for Apple Computer.)

IN FRONT, AND I'M SURE HE'S STILL THERE.
SO NEXT TIME YOU BLUE BOX OR PHREAK, THINK OF THAT GUY LIVING NEXT DOOR, WHO
KNOWS.

*************************************** TRIVIA ******************************

JOE THE WHISTLER, BLIND SINCE BIRTH, WAS ABLE TO WHISTLE THE PERFECT TONES
WITHIN THE 2% ERROR RANGE ESTABLISHED. REPORTEDLY PHREAKS WOULD CALL HIM UP TO
TUNE THEIR BOXES. NOW WORKS FOR THE FONE COMPANY AFTER A, SHALL WE SAY, AN
ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER.

********************************** RECORD PHREAK ****************************

UNKNOWN PHREAK CALLED:

1. PRESIDENT

2. ARMY COMMANDANT IN RUSSIA

3. USAF SAC SQUADRON ALMOST CAUSING AN AIR ALERT.

BIGGEST CALL I KNOW OF WAS EXECUTED BY

HIM:    $19,000 12 HOUR CALL TO....


                       [A PHREAK HISTORY..BY THE ROGUE]
                       [from the book Out of the Inner]
                       [Circle by Bill Landreth, also ]
                       [known as "The Cracker". Phun! ]

Our home computers can contact computers thousands of miles away because
they can use devices called modems that enable them to "hear" and translate
sounds sent over the nation's [and the world's] telephone communication
system.  Like all giant networks, however, the telephone system has it's
weak points, and one lies in the fact that a computer-to-computer hookup
can occur without the knowledge of either the phone company or the invade
machine.  This is the weakness that makes the telephone system and most
computer systems vulnerable to hackers.

In the 1970s, before personal computers became as common as they are now,
the telephone system itself was explored by a group of hackers who called
themselves phone phreaks.  The ethical and technical predecessors of
today's hackers, the phone phreaks were anarchic "musicians" who delighted
in using flutes, whistles and any other sound generators that worked to
enter and explore the worldwide telephone network.
  
The phone phreaks were far less organized and widespread than today's
hackers are, and, in the beginning, none of them even knew of each other's
existence.  The cult itself came into being in the late 1960s, partly
because of "phone hackers" at MIT and Stanford, where there were large
computer centers and nests of hackers, and partly because of a brilliant
young man in Tennessee named Joe Engressia.

Joe was the first phone phreak to achieve media notoriety, when a 1971
Esquire magazine article told the world about him and his co-horts.  Like
many other early phone phreaks, Joe is blind.  He was only twenty-two when
the article was published, but he had been tweaking the phone system since
the age of eight.  Telephones had always fascinated him, and Joe also
happens to be one of those rare individuals who are born with perfect
pitch.  One day, by accident, he discovered how this gift could help him
manipulate some of the most sophisticated and widespread technology in the
world.

He was dialing recorded messages, partly because it was the only way he
knew of to call around the world for free, and partly because it was a
favorite pastime.  He was whistling while listening to a recorded
announcement when suddenly the recording clicked off.  Someone with less
curiosity might have assumed it was just one of those weird things the
telephone company does to you, but Joe had an idea.  He fooled around with
some of their numbers and discovered that he could switch off any recorded
message by whistling a certain tone.

He called the local telephone company and asked why tape recorders stopped
working when he whistled into the telephone.  He didn't fully understand
the explanation that was given to him at the time [remember, he was only
eight years old], but it sounded as though he had stumbled into a whole new
world of things to do and explore.  And to a bright eight-year-old, an
easily explored world, no farther away than his telephone, was, indeed, and
intriguing discovery.

Joe was able to control some of the telephone company's global switching
network--which is what he stumbled upon with his whistling--because of a
decision American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) made sometime in the 1950's.
Their long-term, irreversible, multibillion-dollar decision was to base
their long-distance switching on a series of specific, audible tones called
a multifreqency system (known to phreaks as "MF") is a way for numbers that
designate switching paths to be transmitted as tones similar to the sounds
touch-tone phones make.  Certain frequencies are used to find open lines, to
switch from local to long distance trunks, and, essentially, to do most of
the jobs a human operator is able to do.

Undoubtedly, the decision-makers at AT&T did not give a moment's thought to
the possibility that the system might someday fall before a blind eight-
year old with perfect pitch, but Joe found that he could maneuver his way
through the system by whistling that one specific tone at the right time.
His motivation was not to steal free telephone calls, but to find his way
around the network and to learn how to extend his control over it.

Joe explored for years, but he never thought of himself as an enemy of the
phone system.  He loved the system. His dream was to work for the telephone
company someday, and he often tried to tell the company about bugs he
discovered in the system.  But he finally ran a foul of his intended
employer when he was caught whistling up phone calls for fellow college
students.

The publicity surrounding Joe's case had an unfortunate [for the telephone
company] side effect: it led to the creation of the phone-phreak network.
Soon after the story hit the papers, Joe began to get calls from all over
the country.  Some of the callers were blind, most were young, and all of
them had one thing in common: and enormous curiosity about the telephone
system.  Joe put his callers in touch with one another, and these scattered
experimenters soon found that they had stumbled upon several different ways
to use the MF system as the ticket to a world of electronic globe-trotting.

Joe Engressia may have been the "phounding phather" of the phone phreaks,
but just as one discovery often leads to another and another, it soon
happened that someone else discovered a very large error made by the Bell
Telephone System in 1954.  The Bell System's technical journal had
published a complete description of the multi-freqency system, including
the specific frequencies and descriptions of how the frequencies were used.

Once the frequencies became public knowledge, phreaks began to use pipe
organs, flutes, and tape recorders to create the tones that gave them
control over the telecommunications network.  And then came the ultimate
irony: The news spread that a simple toy whistle included as a giveaway in
boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal produced a pure 2600-cycle tone of one of the
holes in the whistle was taped shut.  Using the whistle at just the right
point in the process of making a connection, phreaks could call each other
whenever and wherever they wanted without having to pay the phone company.
  
One of the more curious and inventive phreaks using the Cap'n Crunch
whistle was John draper, a young Air Force technician stationed overseas.
Draper used the whistle for free calls to his friends in the United States.
He was interested in the way this bizarre tool worked, so he began
experimenting with the system and found that he could use the whistle and
his knowledge of the switching network to route his calls in peculiar ways.

He began by calling people who worked inside the telephone system.  They
weren't aware that he was and outsider, so he was able to start gathering
"intelligence."  Soon, he was calling Peking and Paris, and routing calls
to himself around the world.  He set up massive clandestine conference
calls that phreaks around around the world could join and drop out of at
will.  Soon, he became known to the phreak underground as Cap'n Crunch.

Cap'n Crunch soon found out from other electronically minded phreaks that
it was possible to build specially tuned electronic-tone generators that
could reproduce the MF frequencies.  A few electronic wizards began to
circulate the generators, which were first known as "MF boxes" because the
reproduced the multifreqency tones, and later came to be called "Blue
Boxes," as they are today.
  
The number of phreaks grew, and as they added their own discoveries to the
collection of phreak knowledge, the cult's power to manipulate the system
steadily increased.  Then, in October 1971, the whole underground scene,
from Joe Engressia to Cap'n Crunch, became well know to the outside world.
Esquire magazine published "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" by Ron
Rosenbaum, a journalist who had encountered the top phreaks of the time.
Cap'n Crunch was characterized somewhat romantically in Rosenbaum's piece
as a roving prankster who drove the author around in his specially equipped
van, pausing frequently at public telephones to phone locations around the
world: the American embassy in Moscow, a group of blind teen-age phreaks in
Canada, a public telephone in Trafalgar Square.

After the article was published [though not as a direct result], Crunch was
arrested twice, convicted, and ended up spending four months at the federal
prison in Lompoc, California in 1976, and two at Northampton State Prison
in Pennsylvania in 1977.  While he was in prison, several mob-connected
inmates tried to enlist him in a commercial blue-box venture. Draper/Crunch
declined.  The convicts broke his back and knocked out his front teeth.

After he left prison, Draper quit phreaking and decided to start
programming.  An old friend by the name of Steve Wizniak seemed to be doing
pretty well with a piece of hardware he called the Apple and Draper started
writing software for Apple Computer.  He developed a word-processing
program known as EasyWriter and gained another niche in the technological
Hall of Fame in 1981, when EasyWriter was selected as the first word-
processing program available for the IBM PC.  Now, Cap'n Crunch makes a
legitimate living under a new handle, Cap'n Software.

                                     [TAP]

During his trial, John Draper claimed [and still claims] that his interest
in phreaking was strictly devoted to learning about the workings of complex,
worldwide communication-switching networks.  There were other phreaks,
thought, of a more political mind, who saw this method of technological
trespassing as a tool for spreading anarchy, and one radical branch of the
phreak fraternity grew out of the political group of the late sixties and
early seventies known as the Yippees.

On May Day, 1971, the founding Yippee, Abbie Hoffman, and a phone phreak
who used the handle Al Bell started a subversive publication, called the
Youth International Party Line, which focused on information about cracking
the phone network.  A few years later, its name was changed to
Technological Acetones Program [TAP], when the technological phreaks
separated from their more politically oriented counterparts.  TAP was
purely anarchist.  Through it phreaks learned how to make plastic
explosive, how to obtain phony birth certificates and illicit airline
tickets, and how to abuse credit cards.  It published circuit diagrams of
blue boxes, and it's members specialized in gaining and trading hard-to-get
phone numbers--the Vatican, for example, or the Kremlin.  TAP even secured
the phone number of the American Embassy in Teheran after it was seized by
students during the "hostage crisis" of 1980, posted the number, and
invited phreaks to call the Embassy in tehran and "tell off" the
revolutionary guards...

In the late 1970s the phreak who had been most closely associated with TAP
also became a well-known hacker with the aliases Richard Cheshire and
Cheshire Catalyst.  Often employed as a computer consultant by large
corporations who are unaware of his secret identity, Cheshire has a
widespread, carefully cultivated network of cohorts inside the telephone
company and other institutions.  Avoiding what he calls "dark-side hacking"
that results in damage to data, Cheshire claims that there are some kinds
of information that even TAP will not publish.  For example, Cheshire once
told a friend of mine: "A few years ago, before the Progressive magazine
actually published the plans for making a hydrogen bomb, we were approached
by someone who had similar plans.  I decided that anything like the
hydrogen bomb, which has the capability of destroying the phone network, is
not in our interests."

Cheshire also mentioned an incident in which a hacker he knew stumbled upon
the data-processing facilities of a sop-secret American seismic station in
Iceland, a facility for monitoring Soviet nuclear testing.  The hacker got
out as soon as he realized where he was--"We try to stay away from that
stuff," Cheshire said.  He also remarked, "I once Invited the CIA to attend
a public lecture of mine, and there were a couple of guys at the talk,
seated toward the back who definitely turned a couple of shades of green
when I told about the Icelandic station."

          YOU CAN SUBSCRIBE TO T.A.P. NEWSLETTER BY SENDING $8.00 TO:

                             TAP
                             ROOM 603
                             147 WEST 42ND STREET
                             NEW YORK, NY 10036

NOTE: that address above is the old one.  I have heard various rumors that
TAP went down and is soon coming back up.  If you can steal $8.00 dollars
to stuff in an envelope, it's worth a try... I'll try to get the new
address if I can...  Later on, The Rogue.