Phreaking and Hacking
Discussion
Thought I'd throw this one out to the PH crowd!
I was never much of a hacker, but in my youth used to mess around with phones a lot. The term was Phreaking, and it was harmless fun - in my opinion at least, not so sure about British Telecoms!
With the advent of VOIP and the internet, phreaking is pretty much dead, although I stopped around 15 years ago after a fright involving the MOD. The whole scene was based around bulletin boards and dialup modems, and consisted of a load of geeky teenagers doing things with phones they shouldn't be doing.
The best part was blue-boxing. This would involve dialing some 0800 number that terminated overseas (home country direct numbers), and when they answered, playing audio tones to take control of the trunk line. This worked because the signalling system, CCITT5, used "in band" signalling, and a computer generated tone of 2400/2600hz would release the trunk line at the remote end but keep you connected. From there, you could dial anywhere in the world free, as well as accessing "special" numbers that weren't accessable from normal phones. Programs like BlueBeep, RoxBox and Scavenger Dialler for the Amiga were used to generate these tones. The bulletin boards were full of people sharing routing codes and timings to break/seize the trunk lines.
The whole phreaking scene is pretty much dead now, and I sometimes wonder what happened to all the friends I'd made over the years. AFAIK there was only one person in the UK charged with blue boxing, and he was done with a specimen charge of stealing electricity from BT. I wonder what BT thought of this whole thing, as apparently they never lost money when people blue-boxed.
It's unlikely, but I was wondering if there are any phreaks or old BT engineers on Pistonheads. The whole scene just seemed to vanish once the technology changed. The internet killed off the BBS, and VOIP/cellular killed off blue boxing. We never did anything bad - it's cliche, but it really was about exploring. Experimenting with tones, frequencies and timings. I'll never forget the satisfying "kerchink" sound when you broke and seized a trunkline from some country halfway across the world. It was like a magical, mysterious network that we never really fully understood.
Anyone remember those days? It seemed to die down just before 2000, although I'd left the scene in the mid 90s. I loved my Amiga, 14.4k modem and boxed connections
I was never much of a hacker, but in my youth used to mess around with phones a lot. The term was Phreaking, and it was harmless fun - in my opinion at least, not so sure about British Telecoms!
With the advent of VOIP and the internet, phreaking is pretty much dead, although I stopped around 15 years ago after a fright involving the MOD. The whole scene was based around bulletin boards and dialup modems, and consisted of a load of geeky teenagers doing things with phones they shouldn't be doing.
The best part was blue-boxing. This would involve dialing some 0800 number that terminated overseas (home country direct numbers), and when they answered, playing audio tones to take control of the trunk line. This worked because the signalling system, CCITT5, used "in band" signalling, and a computer generated tone of 2400/2600hz would release the trunk line at the remote end but keep you connected. From there, you could dial anywhere in the world free, as well as accessing "special" numbers that weren't accessable from normal phones. Programs like BlueBeep, RoxBox and Scavenger Dialler for the Amiga were used to generate these tones. The bulletin boards were full of people sharing routing codes and timings to break/seize the trunk lines.
The whole phreaking scene is pretty much dead now, and I sometimes wonder what happened to all the friends I'd made over the years. AFAIK there was only one person in the UK charged with blue boxing, and he was done with a specimen charge of stealing electricity from BT. I wonder what BT thought of this whole thing, as apparently they never lost money when people blue-boxed.
It's unlikely, but I was wondering if there are any phreaks or old BT engineers on Pistonheads. The whole scene just seemed to vanish once the technology changed. The internet killed off the BBS, and VOIP/cellular killed off blue boxing. We never did anything bad - it's cliche, but it really was about exploring. Experimenting with tones, frequencies and timings. I'll never forget the satisfying "kerchink" sound when you broke and seized a trunkline from some country halfway across the world. It was like a magical, mysterious network that we never really fully understood.
Anyone remember those days? It seemed to die down just before 2000, although I'd left the scene in the mid 90s. I loved my Amiga, 14.4k modem and boxed connections
Blue boxing, black boxing, IR strobes for traffic controls, and captin Crunch's infamous whistle!!!! I was there with you my friend, (albeit right at the end of it all). Do you remember the HNC network? Brilliant site, such a shame its all gone now....
Still have aspirations to go to Defcon in Las Vegas sometime.....
That was a real blast from the past reading your post..... Nice one!
GingerWizard
Still have aspirations to go to Defcon in Las Vegas sometime.....
That was a real blast from the past reading your post..... Nice one!
GingerWizard
Whilst never been directly involved (I was a serving member of the armed forces and did a sensitive job) I used to watch the scene and find the whole thing fascinating.
Most of it seemed like fairly harmless fun but of course the Telco's I'm sure would disagree.
I love to explore be it old buildings or IT networks but have always stayed at arms length due to not wanting to destroy my professional career.
Thanks for the read!
Most of it seemed like fairly harmless fun but of course the Telco's I'm sure would disagree.
I love to explore be it old buildings or IT networks but have always stayed at arms length due to not wanting to destroy my professional career.
Thanks for the read!
Oh yes I remember all of this..
And I remember being called to court as an expert witness to give evidence against someone who transited our private network. That was interesting and I remember he got charged - what with I can't recall.
I think the huge drop in call tariffs and the rise of CLID services due to the carriers investing in pre Y2K infrastructure helped take some of the phreaking and Toll Fraud away - with calls globally costing as low as 1p a minute is it really worth messing about with boxes just to make a call.
If you want to get sentinmental - get yourself a copy of the Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll. Excellent reading. He's still in the same field but enjoy 18 Minutes with an agile mind
And I remember being called to court as an expert witness to give evidence against someone who transited our private network. That was interesting and I remember he got charged - what with I can't recall.
I think the huge drop in call tariffs and the rise of CLID services due to the carriers investing in pre Y2K infrastructure helped take some of the phreaking and Toll Fraud away - with calls globally costing as low as 1p a minute is it really worth messing about with boxes just to make a call.
If you want to get sentinmental - get yourself a copy of the Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll. Excellent reading. He's still in the same field but enjoy 18 Minutes with an agile mind
Ordinary_Chap said:
Whilst never been directly involved (I was a serving member of the armed forces and did a sensitive job) I used to watch the scene and find the whole thing fascinating.
Most of it seemed like fairly harmless fun but of course the Telco's I'm sure would disagree.
I love to explore be it old buildings or IT networks but have always stayed at arms length due to not wanting to destroy my professional career.
Thanks for the read!
was much the same, tbh i was too young and middle class to do anything more then get a free call to my mate from a phone box (all of about 1.50) is interesting..... wish i could go back and view the old web pages...Most of it seemed like fairly harmless fun but of course the Telco's I'm sure would disagree.
I love to explore be it old buildings or IT networks but have always stayed at arms length due to not wanting to destroy my professional career.
Thanks for the read!
I completely missed it, however phreaking still goes on albeit of a different nature. I suggest you check out http://www.telephreak.org/
Xenocide said:
Ahh so that's why the mag's called 2600?
Yep, the American "break" tone was a pure 2600hz tone. They would dial cross country numbers to get put through a trunk line, then break/seize with a 2600hz tone. When the Telcos caught on to that, they put filters on the lines that filtered out the 2600hz tone, and the phreaks had to dial international numbers that still used the old C5 signalling.Over here, in the UK, our break tone was 2280Hz (I think?), but that was never boxable. We'd still have to call international 0800 numbers to get access to the old C5 systems.
There were different methods of phreaking, although I always thought of boxing as the purest. People would PBX, which was dialling into misconfigured companys phone networks, and as simple as dialing 9 for an outside line sometimes. The company would then be landed with the bill. Not big and not clever, and a lot of people were caught and charged by trading warez through PBXing.
There was a cool scam with payphones though. When you'd finished a call, you made sure you still had at least 10p credit remaining, and pressed "follow on call". Then you pressed 99* (nine-nine-star), and your money would fall back out. Happy days!
As I was dropping out the scene, people were getting into cellular phreaking. The old analogue network was so vulnerable to abuse. It was trivial to build a "snarfer" that would grab esn/min pairs from the air - these were the unique identifiers for mobiles then - and program them into an old cellphone, landing some unfortunate individual with the bill.
AFAIK, the UK version of the blackbox was never really feasible. It worked in the states, and involved soldering a resistor in parallel across your phone line. This stopped the voltage dropping beyond a certain level, and prevented the Telco from detecting that you had picked up. Then people could call you for free.
ShadownINja said:
Interesting as this is, isn't it a bit like discussing breaking and entering techniques as per the forum linked to a day or two ago? Or was phreaking legal if annoying?
Playing around with phones and/or IP in itself is not illegal. All forms of breaking/entering are illegal (caveats applied).erdnase said:
None of the techniques work anymore, so I hope there's no problem discussing them.
They were only illegal if you used them to make free calls - afaik, breaking/seizing trunklines wasn't illegal, although some bad people did use the techniques to make free calls.
I beg to differ. Some of most well known exploits of the phreaks and hackers used social engineering. This technique still works today.They were only illegal if you used them to make free calls - afaik, breaking/seizing trunklines wasn't illegal, although some bad people did use the techniques to make free calls.
plasticpig said:
erdnase said:
None of the techniques work anymore, so I hope there's no problem discussing them.
They were only illegal if you used them to make free calls - afaik, breaking/seizing trunklines wasn't illegal, although some bad people did use the techniques to make free calls.
I beg to differ. Some of most well known exploits of the phreaks and hackers used social engineering. This technique still works today.They were only illegal if you used them to make free calls - afaik, breaking/seizing trunklines wasn't illegal, although some bad people did use the techniques to make free calls.
too easy..
plasticpig said:
I beg to differ. Some of most well known exploits of the phreaks and hackers used social engineering. This technique still works today.
True.I was just speaking from the point of view about the legality of what we are discussing here.
Blue boxing wasn't illegal in the context that most people think. Breaking/seizing trunks might be annoying and mischevious, but no-one was ever charged with fraud over it. I only know of one person who was caught over it, and he was done with the specimen charge of "theft of electricity" from BT. IE, using BT's electricity for a purpose other than which it was intended for.
Edit: I just found some logs from Unauthorised Access, one of the older BBS from the UK scene. Some interesting reading! People talking of upgrading their Amiga to a whole 2 Meg of ram, 9,600pbs modems, etc. How fast technology changes!
http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/UA/arcmail0.0
Edited by erdnase on Tuesday 22 December 17:37
Edited by erdnase on Tuesday 22 December 17:37
erdnase said:
Blue boxing wasn't illegal in the context that most people think. Breaking/seizing trunks might be annoying and mischevious, but no-one was ever charged with fraud over it. I only know of one person who was caught over it, and he was done with the specimen charge of "theft of electricity" from BT. IE, using BT's electricity for a purpose other than which it was intended for.
So these are illegal too? http://www.gizmag.com/led-rj11-lamp/13289/Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff