This same phreaking technique is also used to break into voicemail systems.
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I don't know if you remember those back in the days of phreaking and hacking, the early days.
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We're a long way from the heyday of phone phreaking—the phenomenon of exploring the telephone system to understand how it works.
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The 1970 text features "recipes" or guides to making homemade bombs, illegal drugs, and phreaking devices in the form of a kitchen manual.
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Like many of his early online friends, he was interested in hacking and phone phreaking (the manipulation of telecommunications systems) — "stuff that wasn't really legal," he said.
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In the late 1980s, someone introduced Mitchell to 2600, the infamous hacking collective and magazine publisher that would meet to discuss the latest tricks in phreaking and exploits.
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Modern phones are just computers sending data over strands of glass like every other computer, and while you can still totally hack them, it's not really phreaking in the classical sense.
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The whole thing sounds kind of like massive-scale phone phreaking, which is cool but probably more scary than cool given how many similarly unsecured systems likely exist in major U.S. cities.
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Before going on to write one of the more important exploits in recent years, Rizzo developed into a hacker the old-fashioned way: he learned to program by hand at the same time he was learning to read and write, he participated in hacker call-ins where a group would discuss security and "H/P/C/V/A: hacking, phreaking, cracking, virus, anarchy".
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During this time, exploration of telephone networks diminished, and phreaking focused more on toll fraud. Computer hackers began to use phreaking methods to find the telephone numbers for modems belonging to businesses, which they could exploit later. Groups then formed around the BBS hacker/phreaking (H/P) community such as the famous Masters of Deception (Phiber Optik) and Legion of Doom (Erik Bloodaxe) groups. In 1985, an underground e-zine called Phrack (a combination of the words Phreak and Hack) began circulation among BBSes, and focused on hacking, phreaking, and other related technological subjects.
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While Phreaking is the process of exploiting telephone networks, it is used here because of its connection to eavesdropping. Van Eck phreaking of CRT displays is the process of eavesdropping on the contents of a CRT by detecting its electromagnetic emissions.
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By the 1980s, much of the system in the US and Western Europe had been converted. Phreaking has since become closely linked with computer hacking. This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with H standing for hacking and P standing for phreaking).
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CNET (CBS Interactive). Lamo began his hacking efforts by hacking games on the Commodore 64 and through phone phreaking.
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According to FBI records, the phone company SBT&T; first noticed his phreaking activities in summer 1968, and an employee of the Florida Bell Telephone Company illegally monitored Engressia's telephone conversations and divulged them to the FBI. After law enforcement raided his house, he was charged with malicious mischief, given a suspended sentence, and quickly abandoned phreaking.
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The US phreaking magazine TAP – The Youth International Party Line (YIPL) (founded in 1971) has been described as a model for Datenschleuder.
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Phreaking boxes are devices used by phone phreaks to perform various functions normally reserved for operators and other telephone company employees. Most phreaking boxes are named after colors, due to folklore surrounding the earliest boxes which suggested that the first ones of each kind were housed in a box or casing of that color. However, very few physical specimens of phreaking boxes are actually the color for which they are named. Most phreaking boxes are electronic devices which interface directly with a telephone line and manipulate the line or the greater system in some way through either by generating audible tones that invoke switching functions (for example, a blue box), or by manipulating the electrical characteristics of the line to disrupt normal line function (for example, a black box).
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FOOD PHREAKING (2013-present) is the journal of experiments, exploits and explorations of the human food system. Each issue contains stories about the space where food, technology & open culture meet. In the introduction of the book Literature and Food Studies the authors use Food Phreaking as a case study to argue for the importance of close readings of vernacular literary practices.
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The Secret History of Hacking is a 2001 documentary film that focuses on phreaking, computer hacking and social engineering occurring from the 1970s through to the 1990s. Archive footage concerning the subject matter and (computer generated) graphical imagery specifically created for the film are voiced over with narrative audio commentary, intermixed with commentary from people who in one way or another have been closely involved in these matters. The film starts by reviewing the concept and the early days of phreaking, featuring anecdotes of phreaking experiences (often involving the use of a blue box) recounted by John Draper and Denny Teresi. By way of commentary from Steve Wozniak, the film progresses from phreaking to computer hobbyist hacking (including anecdotal experiences of the Homebrew Computer Club) on to computer security hacking, noting differences between these 2 forms of hacking in the process.
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Bernie was subsequently arrested and charged with possession of a non-working RadioShack Red box (phreaking) tone phone dialer. Additional materials were seized and never returned.
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A neophyte ("newbie", or "noob") is someone who is new to hacking or phreaking and has almost no knowledge or experience of the workings of technology and hacking.
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In the early 1990s, H/P groups like Masters of Deception and Legion of Doom were shut down by the US Secret Service's Operation Sundevil. Phreaking as a subculture saw a brief dispersion in fear of criminal prosecution in the 1990s, before the popularity of the internet initiated a reemergence of phreaking as a subculture in the US and spread phreaking to international levels. Into the turn of the 21st century, phreaks began to focus on the exploration and playing with the network, and the concept of toll fraud became widely frowned on among serious phreakers, primarily under the influence of the website Phone Trips, put up by second generation phreaks Mark Bernay and Evan Doorbell.
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Portions of Cryptonomicon are notably complex. Several pages are spent explaining in detail some of the concepts behind cryptography and data storage security, including a description of Van Eck phreaking.
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A beige box. In phone phreaking, a beige box is a device that is technically equivalent to a telephone company lineman's handset — a telephone fitted with alligator clips to attach it to a line.
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The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking group. Today the PLA hosts the popular prank call podcast the "Snow Plow Show" which it has hosted since 2012.
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Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking. The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones used to route long-distance calls.
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Blue Box In October 1971, phreaking was introduced to the masses when Esquire Magazine published a story called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" by Ron Rosenbaum. This article featured Engressia and John Draper prominently, synonymising their names with phreaking. The article also attracted the interest of other soon-to-be phreaks, such as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who went on to found Apple Computer. 1971 also saw the beginnings of YIPL (Youth International Party Line), a publication started by Abbie Hoffman and Al Bell to provide information to Yippies on how to "beat the man," mostly involving telephones.
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By the late 1990s, the fraudulent aspect of phreaking all but vanished. In the United States most cellular phones offered unlimited domestic long-distance calling for the price of standard airtime (often totally unlimited on weekends), and flat-rate long-distance plans appeared offering unlimited home phone long-distance for as little as $25 per month. Rates for international calls had also decreased significantly. Between the much higher risk of being caught (due to advances in technology) and the much lower gain of making free phone calls, toll fraud started to become a concept associated very little with phreaking.
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Warez (nominally ) is a plural shortening of "software", typically referring to cracked and redistributed software. Phreaking refers to the hacking of telephone systems and other non-Internet equipment. Teh originated as a typographical error of "the", and is sometimes spelled t3h.LeBlanc, 34-35.
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In Phreaking, the green box was a device whose function was to manipulate the coin collection mechanism of payphones. It employed three of the MF (multi- frequency) tones used in the blue box and could be viewed as a subset of that device.
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X Real Time Operating System Terminus and Lord Digital (1984) culminating in an extensive, programmable phone phreaking and hacking toolkit for the Apple II computer, called Phantom Access (which is where the name Phantom Access Technologies, the parent corporation behind MindVox, would later come from).
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According to an NSA document leaked to Der Spiegel, the NSA sometimes swaps the monitor cables on targeted computers with a bugged monitor cable in order to allow the NSA to remotely see what is being displayed on the targeted computer monitor.Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox, dec 2013 Van Eck phreaking is the process of remotely displaying the contents of a CRT or LCD by detecting its electromagnetic emissions. It is named after Dutch computer researcher Wim van Eck, who in 1985 published the first paper on it, including proof of concept. Phreaking more generally is the process of exploiting telephone networks.
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The subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene, or computer underground. It initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup.
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In addition, a DC power source is required to power the telephones on the target's line. This is a very risky and stealth-intensive technique that requires the user to physically connect to the target line, anywhere between the premises of the target and the local exchange. However, properly applied, it will result in an incoming call to the target line that is completely indistinguishable from a genuine call and which cannot possibly be traced. The vermilion box is named, following the tradition of naming phreaking boxes after colors, for a color (vermilion) that is similar to a combination of the color names of two of the component phreaking boxes from which this box is made: orange and magenta.
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Gray Areas was a quarterly magazine published from 1992 to 1995 by publisher Netta Gilboa. The magazine was based in Phoenix, Arizona. It won several awards including "One Of The Top Ten Magazines of 1992" by Library Journal. It discussed subcultures involving drugs (narcotics), phreaking, cyberpunk, pornography, the Grateful Dead and related issues.
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MF is a type of in-band signaling. Depending on the type and configuration of switching equipment, it may or may not be audible to the telephone user, but the technology was vulnerable to abuse with a method called phreaking with a blue box which generates the tones required to control remote telephone switches.
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A tailored access battery is a special laptop battery with Van Eck Phreaking electronics and power-side band encryption cracking electronics built-into its casing, in combination with a remote transmitter/receiver. This allows for quick installation and removal of a spying device by simply switching the battery.White paper, FDES institute, 1996, page 12.
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Joybubbles ( – ), born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of "172 or something".
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In some locations, calling across the street counted as long distance. To report that a phone call was long- distance meant an elevated importance because the calling party is paying by the minute to speak to the called party; transact business quickly. Phreaking consists of techniques to evade long-distance charges. This evasion is illegal; the crime is called "toll fraud".
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The end of multi-frequency (MF) phreaking in the lower 48 United States occurred on June 15, 2006, when the last exchange in the contiguous United States to use a "phreakable" MF-signalled trunk replaced the aging (yet still well kept) N2 carrier with a T1 carrier. This exchange, located in Wawina Township, Minnesota, was run by the Northern Telephone Company of Minnesota.
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Under some circumstances, the signal radiated from the electron guns, scanning circuitry, and associated wiring of a CRT can be captured remotely and used to reconstruct what is shown on the CRT using a process called Van Eck phreaking. Special TEMPEST shielding can mitigate this effect. Such radiation of a potentially exploitable signal, however, occurs also with other display technologies and with electronics in general.
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It wasn't long before others became interested in the BBS software, and it went on to have over 500 authorized BBSes and about three times that number using it in an unauthorized manner. It was very popular in the underground pirate, hacking, and phreaking community as well as with legitimate systems, including church BBSes, non profit group BBSes, many shareware distribution systems, and a governmental BBS in Portugal.
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The tone was discovered in approximately 1957, by Joe Engressia, a blind seven-year-old boy. Engressia had perfect pitch, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C (a frequency of 2637.02 Hz) would stop a dialed phone recording. Unaware of what he had done, Engressia called the phone-company and asked why the recordings had stopped. Joe Engressia is considered to be the father of phreaking.
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The tone disconnected one end of the trunk while the still-connected side entered an operator mode. The vulnerability they had exploited was limited to call-routing switches that relied on in-band signaling. After 1980 and the introduction of Signalling System No. 7 most U.S. phone lines relied almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling. This change rendered the toy whistles and blue boxes useless for phreaking purposes.
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HoHoCon (or XmasCon) was a conference series which took place shortly before or after Christmas in Houston, Texas, sponsored by Drunkfux and the hacker ezine Cult of the Dead Cow. The fourth and fifth HoHoCons were also sponsored by Phrack magazine and took place in Austin, Texas. Phreaking software BlueBEEP was released at HoHoCon '93. HoHoCon is generally credited as being the first "modern" hacker con, although SummerCon was around before it.
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Weigman had developed a keen sense of hearing and memory. He was able to impersonate any voice, memorize phone numbers by listening to the phone tones, and he gained the skills to understand the inner working of a phone network system by listening to the different frequencies. He had the ability to mimic characters he heard on television and play songs on the piano by ear. Weigman's first experience with phreaking was by accident.
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Users are lured by communications purporting to be from trusted parties such as social web sites, auction sites, banks, colleagues/executives, online payment processors or IT administrators. Attempts to deal with phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures (the latter being due to phishing attacks frequently exploiting weaknesses in current web security). The word is created as a homophone and a sensational spelling of fishing, influenced by phreaking.
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Prior to 1990, people who manipulated telecommunication systems, known as phreakers, were generally not prosecuted within the United States. The majority of phreakers used software to obtain calling card numbers and built simple tone devices in order to make free telephone calls. A small elite, highly technical segment of phreakers were more interested in information about the inner workings of the telecommunication system than in making free phone calls. Phone companies complained of financial losses from phreaking activities.
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Operation Sundevil allowed multiple federal law enforcement agencies, particularly the Secret Service and the FBI, to gain valuable expertise on fighting this new form of criminal activity as well as expanding the agencies' budgets. New laws were created to allow federal prosecutors to charge individuals accused of phreaking, hacking, wire, and credit card fraud. Evidence gained from Operation Sundevil allowed law enforcement to convince the United States Congress of the need for additional funding, training, and overall expansion.
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A controversially suppressed article "Regulating the Phone Company In Your Home" in Ramparts Magazine (June, 1972) increased interest in phreaking. This article published simple schematic plans of a "black box" used to make free long-distance phone calls, and included a very short parts list that could be used to construct one. Ma Bell sued Ramparts, forcing the magazine to pull all copies from shelves, but not before numerous copies were sold and many regular subscribers received them.
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As knowledge of phreaking spread, a minor culture emerged from the increasing number of phone phreaks. Sympathetic (or easily social- engineered) telephone company employees were persuaded to reveal the various routing codes to use international satellites and trunk lines. At the time it was felt that there was nothing Bell could do to stop this. Their entire network was based on this system, so changing the system in order to stop the phreakers would require a massive infrastructure upgrade.
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His first non-fiction book, Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway (1994, 1996, 1997) introduces the concepts of cyberterrorism to the public. Another of his books, Cybershock (2000, 2001), is a non-technical look at the DEF CON conference, hackers in general, Phreaking, and the importance of computer security. He wrote Time Based Security, outlining how to use time as a security metric. Pearl Harbor Dot Com is a novel about a terrorist cyberattack on the United States.
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It was at this time Irming discovered his life-long passion for computer engineering which eventually led him to the demoscene, phone hacking (phreaking), early cracking underground, and computer hacker subculture in Europe. Amplitude Problem's track Computer Corner was a tribute to the store's impact on his formative years as a young hacker. The music video for the song was created by German pixel artist Valenberg, the artist for the point-and-click cyberpunk video game VirtuaVerse.
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The tampering of the software would not be recognisable by voters or election officials. Dutch citizens group cracks Nedap's voting computer On October 30, 2006, the Dutch Minister of the Interior withdrew the license of 1187 voting machines from manufacturer Sdu NV, about 10% of the total number to be used, because it was proven by the General Intelligence and Security Service that one could eavesdrop on voting from up to 40 meters using Van Eck phreaking.
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Lacking an Apple II computer and Apple-Cat modem, in addition to their historical value, perhaps the most useful and interesting part of the Phantom Access programs is the extensive documentation Kroupa wrote.Phantom Access Documentation (converted to text) (Retrieved from Textfiles.com) In addition to explaining how to program the sub-modules, the documents provide an extensive overview of phreaking information, information about the other programs in the Phantom Access series (which appear to have been other system penetration tools and rootkits, before the term "rootkit" existed), and the eventual goal of the whole series, which seems to have been turning the entire Apple II computer and Apple-Cat modem into a programmable phreaking box, which could be plugged into the computers Kroupa and other LOD members were abandoning the Apple platform and switching over to (NeXT, Sun and SGI hardware).Voices in My Head: MindVox The Overture by Patrick Kroupa, 1992 From the Phantom Access documentation: :The eventual goal of Phantom Access was to realize a fully automated system for the Apple-Cat modem.
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In 2003 he started his collaboration with Jay Lynch, and shortly after that with Harvey Pekar. Piskor's first major task with Pekar was illustrating stories of American Splendor: Our Movie Year, which elaborates Pekar's experience after the release of the movie American Splendor. Piskor also illustrated Pekar's graphic novel Macedonia, which was released in 2007 through Villard Books. Piskor's series Wizzywig deals with Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a young prodigy who becomes fascinated with social engineering, phone phreaking, and eventually computer hacking.
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Perens grew up in Long Island, New York. He was born with cerebral palsy, which caused him to have slurred speech as a child, a condition that led to a misdiagnosis of him as developmentally disabled in school and led the school to fail to teach him to read. He developed an interest in technology at an early age: besides his interest in amateur radio, he ran a pirate radio station in the town of Lido Beach and briefly engaged in phone phreaking.
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Large systems used all 26 DOS drive letters with multi-disk changers housing tens of thousands of copyright-free shareware or freeware files available to all callers. These BBSes were generally more family friendly, avoiding the seedier side of BBSes. Access to these systems varied from single to multiple modem lines with some requiring little or no confirmed registration. Some BBSes, called elite, WaReZ or pirate boards, were exclusively used for distributing cracked software, phreaking, and other questionable or unlawful content.
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Cryptonomicon is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Isoroku Yamamoto, Karl Dönitz, Hermann Göring, and Ronald Reagan, as well as some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, with discussions of prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and Van Eck phreaking.
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The main basic difference between programmer subculture and computer security hacker is their mostly separate historical origin and development. However, the Jargon File reports that considerable overlap existed for the early phreaking at the beginning of the 1970s. An article from MIT's student paper The Tech used the term hacker in this context already in 1963 in its pejorative meaning for someone messing with the phone system. The overlap quickly started to break when people joined in the activity who did it in a less responsible way.
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TRSI pixel-drawn logo by J.O.E Tristar & Red Sector Incorporated (TRSI) is a demogroup which formed in 1990. It came about from the longest-running cooperation in scene history. RSI existed from 1985, before being joined by the "T" later on. Evolving from the Commodore 64 to the Amiga and later to PC and various game console platforms - like the PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo - and set-ups like Arduino, Android or Blu-ray, TRSI released a number of digital productions, dedicated to experimenting in phreaking or network alteration.
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The origins of phone phreaking trace back at least to AT&T;'s implementation of fully automatic switches. These switches used tone dialing, a form of in-band signaling, and included some tones which were for internal telephone company use. One internal-use tone is a tone of 2600 Hz which causes a telephone switch to think the call had ended, leaving an open carrier line, which can be exploited to provide free long-distance, and international calls. At that time, long-distance calls were more expensive.
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Van Eck phreaking might also be used to compromise the secrecy of the votes in an election using electronic voting. This caused the Dutch government to ban the use of NewVote computer voting machines manufactured by SDU in the 2006 national elections, under the belief that ballot information might not be kept secret. Dutch government scraps plans to use voting computers in 35 cities including Amsterdam (Herald tribune, 30. October 2006)Use of SDU voting computers banned during Dutch general elections (Heise, October 31.
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Dennis Dan "Denny" Teresi (born August 14, 1954), now known as Dennis Terry, is an American radio disc jockey and former phone phreak most famous for being the person who introduced John Draper to the field of phreaking. Both Draper and Teresi were operating pirate radio stations in the San Jose, California area. Their initial contact came when Teresi responded by telephone to one of Draper's pirate broadcasts. In the documentary The Secret History of Hacking, Teresi is identified as an expert in social engineering.
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Instructions for constructing a beige box can be found in many places on the Internet, as well as instructions on how to make other phreaking boxes. Alternative beige boxes can also be built by connecting alligator clips to an RJ11 jack. This method does not require modification of a telephone—any kind of telephone that connects to the jack can be used. The alligator clips on a typical Lineman's handset usually include a part known as a "bed of nails" connector, allowing the clips to be attached to wires without removing their insulation.
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In December 1992, British Prime Minister John Major announced the couple's formal separation in Parliament. Earlier that year, the British press had published transcripts of a passionate bugged telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla from 1989."The Camillagate Tapes", 18 December 1989, phone transcript, Phone Phreaking Prince Charles sought public understanding via a televised interview with Jonathan Dimbleby on 29 June 1994. In the interview, he confirmed his own extramarital affair with Camilla, saying that he had rekindled their association in 1986 only after his marriage to Diana had "irretrievably broken down".
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Such software could be installed physically or remotely. Another form of computer surveillance, known as van Eck phreaking, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters. The NSA runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners. Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as PRISM, which is a data mining system that gives the United States government direct access to information from technology companies.
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Before the BBS era of the 1980s phone phreaking was more of a solitary venture as it was difficult for phreaks to connect with one another. In addition to communicating over BBSs phone phreaks discover voice mail boxes and party lines as ways to network and keep in touch over the telephone. They usually appropriate unused boxes that are part of business or cellular phone systems. Once a vulnerable mailbox system is discovered, word would spread around the phreak community, and scores of them would take residence on the system.
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Many BBSs offered cracked commercial software, sometimes requiring special access and usually requiring users to maintain an upload/download ratio. A large number of warez groups existed, including Fairlight, which continued to exist more than a decade after the C64's demise. Some members of these groups turned to telephone phreaking and credit card or calling card fraud to make long-distance calls, either to download new titles not yet available locally, or to upload newly cracked titles released by the group. Not all Commodore 64 users had modems however.
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The gold box is a phreaking box whose function is to create a bridge between two telephone lines. In its basic operation, the user calls one of the lines, the gold box answers and connects the two lines together, yielding the dial tone of the second line to the user. The user can then place calls from the second line which are billed (and traced) to that line. The gold box can be considered a hardware version of a diverter, which is a fixed form of call forwarding.
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The term "demon dialing" derives from the Demon Dialer product from Zoom Telephonics, Inc., a telephone device produced in the 1980s which repeatedly dialed busy telephone numbers under control of an extension phone. "Demon dialing" was popularized by the movie WarGames, which demonstrates the hacking technique (the technique eventually evolves into a technique called "phreaking"). After giving the program an area code and 3 digit prefix, the program then serially dialed every phone number in that prefix in order, recording which phone numbers were answered by a computer modem.
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Phrack is an ezine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest. It has a wide circulation which includes both hackers and computer security professionals. Originally covering subjects related to phreaking, anarchy and cracking, the articles also cover a wide range of topics including computer and physical security, hacking, cryptography, counter culture and international news.
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Susan Headley was an American hacker active during the late 1970s and early 1980s widely respected for her expertise in social engineering, pretexting, and psychological subversion. She was known for her specialty in breaking into military computer systems, which often involved going to bed with military personnel and going through their clothes for usernames and passwords while they slept. She became heavily involved in phreaking with Kevin Mitnick and Lewis de Payne in Los Angeles, but later framed them for erasing the system files at US Leasing after a falling out, leading to Mitnick's first conviction. She retired to professional poker.
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The Hi-Tech Crime Unit deals with computer crime and the use of computers in committing crimes. Offences may include harassment, theft, hacking, phone phreaking (making telephone calls which are then charged to another person's bill) and child pornography. Many of these are new crimes, which have only appeared since the widespread availability of computers and the Internet. The Hi-Tech Crime Unit is a relatively new addition to policing in Essex and forms part of a national network of agencies fighting against computer crime, headed by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit based in London Docklands.
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He researched, self-published and distributed a series of editions of Alternative London, an encyclopaedic guide to living in London, particularly for young people squatting, living on low incomes, on the fringes of conventional society, and with 'alternative' values and ambitions such as living communally and pursuing spiritual development. After traveling around the country in his live-in van Saunders published the larger 'Alternative England and Wales' guide in the same vein. Topics included improvising plumbing, electricals, telecommunications (including phreaking), and other services, dealing with the legal and social security systems, sex, health, drug information, transport, food and spiritual religious and mystical systems.
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Philes commonly refer to files about hacking in the days of BBSs. The use of ph in lieu of f is an homage to the word phone. Other common abstractions of the word are t-files (shorthand for text files) and g-files (general files (etymology not certain)). Their contents could vary from actual hacking and phone phreaking, sexual content, humour, technical information, down to subversive or so-called anarchy material about controversial topics such as poison brewing, homemade explosives, suggestions for making harmful pranks, urban terrorism "tactics", building homemade weapons and other similar information of dubious reliability, e.g.
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Since the symbol looked like a fish, and due to the popularity of phreaking it was adapted as "Phishing". AOHell, released in early 1995, was a program designed to hack AOL users by allowing the attacker to pose as an AOL staff member, and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password. In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information, the message might include imperatives such as "verify your account" or "confirm billing information". Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim's account for fraudulent purposes.
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She manages to track down Nicole, who is actually a woman nicknamed "Jelly", who is partially sighted, somewhat overweight, and was middle aged at the time she made these calls, inspired by her then boyfriend who was involved in phone phreaking. Jelly is reluctant to be interviewed for Meadow's film until she learns that Jack Cusano, a composer with whom she fell in love, has agreed to be interviewed. Carrie watches the film, in which Jack finally meets "Nicole" and is disgusted with her. Jelly accuses Meadow of using her pain for her own selfish purposes.
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These held a variety of data, including software, Phreaking and Hacking tools, tens of thousands of Credit card details, and a plethora of illegal copyrighted material. The three people arrested were "Tony the Trashman," "Dr. Ripco," and "Electra." Other parts of the operation targeted the underground ezine Phrack, which had published the contents of a proprietary text file copied from BellSouth computers and containing information about the E911 emergency response system, although this was later made null in a court case in which it was proven that the same information about the E911 system was also provided to the public through a mail-order catalog.
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As a consequence of this research, such emanations are sometimes called "van Eck radiation", and the eavesdropping technique van Eck phreaking. Government researchers were already aware of the danger, as Bell Labs had noted this vulnerability to secure teleprinter communications during World War II and was able to produce 75% of the plaintext being processed in a secure facility from a distance of 80 feet (24 metres). Additionally the NSA published Tempest Fundamentals, NSA-82-89, NACSIM 5000, National Security Agency (Classified) on February 1, 1982. In addition, the van Eck technique was successfully demonstrated to non- TEMPEST personnel in Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s.
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Binary Revolution Radio, often shortened to "BRR", was one part of the binrev community. Started and hosted by Blake in 2003, it featured different co-hosts each week, and covered different aspects of hacker culture and computer security. It was broadcast via internet stream, usually prerecorded in Florida on a weekend, and then edited and released on the following Tuesday, on the DDP Hack Radio stream at 9:30pm EST. Topics included phreaking, identity theft, cryptography, operating systems, programming languages, free and open source software, wi-fi and bluetooth, social engineering, cyberculture, and information about various hacker conventions such as PhreakNIC, ShmooCon, H.O.P.E., and Def Con.
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Instead, ethics, enlightened self-interest and the commonwealth were the elements they believed to create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. In his 1990 piece "Crime and Puzzlement: in advance of the law on the electronic frontier", Barlow wrote about his first-hand experience with Phiber Optik (Mark Abene) and Acid Phreak (Elias Ladopoulos) from the hacker group Masters of Deception, and mentioned Kevin Mitnick—all of whom were engaged in phone phreaking. The title alludes to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Barlow is credited with popularizing of the concept of pronoia (defined as the opposite of paranoia) and was considered a celebrity ally of the Zippy Pronoia Tour in 1994.
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2600 Hz, the key to early phreaking, was the frequency of the tone sent by the long-distance switch indicating that the user had gone on-hook (hung up the phone). This normally resulted in the remote switch also going on-hook, freeing the trunk for other uses. In order to make free lines easy to find, the 2600 Hz tone was continually played into free trunks. If the tone was sent manually by the local user into the phone line, it would trigger the remote switch to go on- hook, but critically, the local switch knew he was still off-hook because that was signaled electrically, not by the tone (which their local switch ignored).
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A caller who possesses no means of payment may have the phone company's operator ask the call recipient if the recipient is willing to make payment for the call; this is known as "reversing the charges", "reverse charged call" or a "collect call". It is also sometimes possible to place a call to a phone booth if the intended recipient is known to be waiting at the booth, but not all phone booths allow such incoming calls. Long before "computer hacking" was a common phenomenon, creative mischief-makers devised tactics for obtaining free phone usage through a variety of techniques, including several for defeating the electro- mechanical payment mechanisms of telephone booths—early methods of phone phreaking.
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In 1971, journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrote about phone phreaking for Esquire. The article relied heavily on interviews with Draper and conferred upon him a sort of celebrity status among people interested in the counterculture. When first contacted by Rosenbaum about the story, Draper was ambivalent about being interviewed, but also in the same breath explained his prevailing ethos: The notoriety from the article led to Draper's arrest in 1972 on charges of toll fraud, for which he was sentenced to five years' probation. However, it also caught the attention of University of California, Berkeley engineering student and future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who located Draper while working as an engineer at the radio station KKUP.
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Genocide2600 was a hacker group or collective which was active from the 1980s into early 2000. The group's name was explained as a statement designed to show people that they had become desensitized to being shocked by the horrors seen throughout the world such as murder and other atrocities. It was the hope of the founder "Genocide" that the very name or word Genocide would cause people to flinch or experience some sort of revulsion and therefore, wake up a little. The Genocide2600 Group's origin started in approximately 1987 with the group taking part in telephone phreaking, writing and rewriting methodologies for taking advantage of telephony systems and then trading such information on bulletin board systems.
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The Legion of Doom (LOD) was a hacker group founded by the hacker Lex Luthor after a rift with his previous group called the Knights of Shadow. LOD was active from the 1980s to the early 2000s, although was most active from 1984–1991 and at the time was considered to be the most capable hacking group in the world. Today, Legion of Doom ranks as one of the more influential hacking groups in the history of technology, appearing to be a reference to the antagonists of Challenge of the Super Friends. At different points in the group's history, LOD was split into LOD and LOD/LOH (Legion of Doom/Legion of Hackers) for the members that were more skilled at hacking than pure phreaking.
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The CCITT standardization process specified the American Bell System version as Regional Standard No. 1, or Signalling System R1, and a corresponding European standard as Signalling System R2. Both were largely replaced by digital systems, such as Signalling System 7, which operate out-of-band on a separate data network. Because of the in-band transmission characteristic of MF signaling, the systems proved vulnerable to misuse and fraud by phone phreaking with devices such as a blue box. Multifrequency signaling is a technological precursor of dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF, Touch-Tone), which uses the same fundamental principle, but was used primarily for signaling address information and control signals from a user's telephone to the wire-center's Class-5 switch.
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Caller ID spoofing, social engineering, TTY, prank calls, and phone phreaking techniques may be variously combined by swatting perpetrators. 911 systems (including computer telephony systems and human operators) have been tricked by calls placed from cities hundreds of miles away from the location of the purported call, or even from other countries. The caller typically places a 911 call using a spoofed phone number (so as to hide the fraudulent caller's real location) with the goal of tricking emergency authorities into responding with a SWAT team to a fabricated emergency. Swatting is linked to the action of doxing, which is obtaining and broadcasting, often via the Internet, the address and details of an individual with an intent to harass or endanger them.
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Possibly one of the first phreaking methods was switch-hooking, which allows placing calls from a phone where the rotary dial or keypad has been disabled by a key lock or other means to prevent unauthorized calls from that phone. It is done by rapidly pressing and releasing the switch hook to open and close the subscriber circuit, simulating the pulses generated by the rotary dial. Even most current telephone exchanges support this method, as they need to be backward compatible with old subscriber hardware. By rapidly clicking the hook for a variable number of times at roughly 5 to 10 clicks per second, separated by intervals of roughly one second, the caller can dial numbers as if they were using the rotary dial.
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In the 1980s, the revolution of the personal computer and the popularity of computer bulletin board systems (BBSes) (accessed via modem) created an influx of tech-savvy users. These BBSes became popular for computer hackers and others interested in the technology, and served as a medium for previously scattered independent phone phreaks to share their discoveries and experiments. This not only led to unprecedented collaboration between phone phreaks, but also spread the notion of phreaking to others who took it upon themselves to study, experiment with, or exploit the telephone system. This was also at a time when the telephone company was a popular subject of discussion in the US, as the monopoly of AT&T; Corporation was forced into divestiture.
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Characters such as 'The Video Vindicator' would write extensive guides on 'Carding Across America', burglary, fax fraud, supporting phreaking, and advanced techniques for maximizing profits. During the 1980s, the majority of hacker arrests were attributable to carding-related activities due to the relative maturity of financial laws compared to emerging computer regulations. Started in 1989, by 1990 Operation Sundevil was launched by the United States Secret Service to crack down on use of BBS groups involved in credit card fraud and other illegal computer activities, the most highly publicised action by the US federal government against hackers at the time. The severity of the crack down was so much that the Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed in response to the violation of civil liberties.
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The vermilion box is a hypothetical portable improvised line emulator. Its function is to spoof not only caller ID but every other aspect of an incoming telephone call, including ringing and DC line voltage. Typically, the user physically disconnects the target line from the telephone network, connects the vermilion box, and then proceeds to create a completely bogus telephone call. The vermilion box incorporates three more basic phreaking boxes: the magenta box, which generates the AC ringing signal required to make the target telephone ring; the orange box, which generates caller ID (although it is not a proper call-waiting caller ID orange box that is used but a modified orange box that generates on-hook (idle state) caller ID); and the beige box that is used to conduct the actual conversation.
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Classic phreaking with the 2600 Hz tone continued to work in more remote locations into the 1980s, but was of little use in North America by the 1990s, MF Signalling is still used on various parts of the U.S. Network but is almost always out-of-band. The last 2600 Hz-controlled trunk in the contiguous United States was operated by the independent Northern Telephone Company with an N2 Carrier system serving Wawina, Minnesota until June 15, 2006, when it was replaced by T1 carrier. The last 2600 Hz-controlled trunks in North America were located in Livengood, Alaska, survived another 5 years, and were finally retired in March 2011. Some legacy PABXes are still in existence which use the in-band Wink/Start protocol over analog T1 circuits (pre-ISDN) for their connection the PSTN.
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The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th edition During his time in the computer underground Kroupa was a member of the first Pirate/Cracking crew to ever exist for the Apple II computer: The Apple MafiaApple Mafia Krack title page 1Apple Mafia Krack title page 2 as well as various phreaking/hacking groups, the most high-profile being the Knights of Shadow. When KOS fell apart after a series of arrests, many of the surviving members were absorbed into Kroupa's final group affiliation: the Legion of Doom (LoD/H).THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier War on The Legion, Bruce Sterling Kroupa started publishing some of his hacking techniques when he would have been around 12 or 13.A Guide To ADS Systems, Lord Digital (1982) There is a significant progression through years of text, which captures Kroupa's early evolution and skills,RSX11M Version 3.
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Van Eck phreaking, also known as Van Eck radiation, is a form of eavesdropping in which special equipment is used to pick up side-band electromagnetic emissions from electronic devices that correlate to hidden signals or data for the purpose of recreating these signals or data in order to spy on the electronic device. Side-band electromagnetic radiation emissions are present in (and with the proper equipment, can be captured from) keyboards, computer displays, printers, and other electronic devices. In 1985, Wim van Eck published the first unclassified technical analysis of the security risks of emanations from computer monitors. This paper caused some consternation in the security community, which had previously believed that such monitoring was a highly sophisticated attack available only to governments; van Eck successfully eavesdropped on a real system, at a range of hundreds of metres, using just $15 worth of equipment plus a television set.
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Phone phreaking got its start in the late 1950s in the United States. Its golden age was the late 1960s and early 1970s. Phone phreaks spent a lot of time dialing around the telephone network to understand how the phone system worked, engaging in activities such as listening to the pattern of tones to figure out how calls were routed, reading obscure telephone company technical journals, learning how to impersonate operators and other telephone company personnel, digging through telephone company trash bins to find "secret" documents, sneaking into telephone company buildings at night and wiring up their own telephones, building electronic devices called blue boxes, black boxes, and red boxes to help them explore the network and make free phone calls, hanging out on early conference call circuits and "loop arounds" to communicate with one another and writing their own newsletters to spread information. Before 1984, long-distance telephone calls were a premium item in the United States, with strict regulations.
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