78 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
78 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
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An American Express Phone Story
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By: Chester Holmes
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Reprinted from 2600 magazine, March 1986
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This story is a memory of hacking a formidable American
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institution - American Express. No, not AX's internal telecommunications
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network, but the corporation's toll-free charge card authorization number.
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The following can be safely told as our "system" went down a few years ago.
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It all started in the summer of 1982. I had been on the lookout for
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various extenders and other nifty things a phone could link up with. Most
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were found by scanning and searching 800 number series using the time-honored
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"hang-up-if-a-human-answers" technique. After a long and fruitless afternoon
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of such looking, I decided to take a run on down to the local Chinese eatery
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as my stomach's contents had been depleted several hours earlier. I wasn't
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wont on dining there; take-out would have been fine. Well, as Murphy would
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predict, my fried rice order wasn't ready at the appointed time, so I found
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myself at the register with a few moments to kill. Murphy struck again: on
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the register was a sticker with several 800 numbers and the words "American
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Express Charge Authorization" emblazoned theron.
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The MSG in Chinese food affects people in a variety of ways. Some folks get
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rambunctious, but I get sleepy. I told my associate about this number, and
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told him my right index finger was worn down from hours of dialing. He
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understood, and made some discoveries while playing with the system all that
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night.
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If I can recall correctly, when one dialed the number (alas, time has erased
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the number from my brain's RAM), the merchant would be prompted to enter the
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card number, amount, etc., and the computer would give an approval code. A *#
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would abort the procedure at any time and disconnect. Merely pressing ## during
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the call would get an AX operator. This was accomplished by the system
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obtaining a dial tone and then automatically touch-toning the four-digit
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extension. We had our fun harassing the operators, for when they hung up, the
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dial tone would return, but would not automatically dial! We were thus free
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to make local calls within New York City! We soon tired of this game, so
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instead we developed a method of beating the system's demon dialer. Upon dial
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tone receipt, we quickly touch-toned 9958. The first 9 would give us an
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outside line, and the 958 was the Automatic Number Identification for New
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York. The four system-generated digits would then come through and be ignored.
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This trick saved us from continual arousal of credit-operator suspicion, and
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the dial tone was returned after ANI did her thing. We also learned how many
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different phone numbers they used for this system.
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You'll note I said we were free to make local calls. We were able to dial
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9-0 to get a Bell operator, who was most happy to assist in placing our
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rong-distance calls. For some reason, however, these operators couldn't help
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with 900 calls (I got the same operator three times in one night while trying
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to listen to the space shuttle. We developed a kinship by the last call).
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The AX PBX would give a stern warning if we tried to dial a long distance call
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directly ("Class of Service Restriction. Class of Service Restriction."), but
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we soon outsmarted it: it wasn't looking for a 1+NPA etc., but had a timer
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going, and if you dialed more than eight digits (9+, etc.) in a period of
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about five seconds, you'd get that mesge. So we dialed the first few
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digits, paused, dialed the remainder, and the call went through (even to the
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space shuttle).
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Connections were generally less than optimum (in fact they sucked) but if
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you and your called party were in quiet rooms, you could talk for hours.
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Another minor annoyance was crosstalk. I had often heard the familiar 9958
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off in the background, and once I even faintly heard my buddy. We shouted at
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one another for a while until one of us hit *#.
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I don't think AX was ever quite aware of our exploits since it was online
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for several months: a new system was installed when their authorization people
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moved to Florida. I had an Amex card all the while, but recently gave it up
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when they raised their annual "membership" to $45, and didn't tell me. It was
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them pissing me off like that that prompted me to tell this tale.
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