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.