phreaking

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a subculture of people who study, experiment with, or exploit telephones, the telephone company, and systems connected to or composing the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for the purposes of hobby or utility. The term "phreak" is a portmanteau of the words "phone" and "freak." It may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. "Phreak", "phreaker", or "phone phreak" are names used by and towards people who participate in phreaking. It is often considered similar, and therefore grouped in category with hacker (computer security)|computer hacking. This is sometimes called the H/P culture (H for Hacking and P for Phreaking.)

History of phreaking

The precise origin of phone phreaking is disputed, as there is no one defining event when it started. One could argue that the inception of the telephone could be the origin of phreak-like experimentation. There are also reports of people playing with some of the first automatic switching equipment back in the 1920s. Modern day phreaking, however, is more likely to be traced to the United States in the mid-to-late 1950s when AT&T started introducing fully automatic direct-dial long distance and certain forms of trunking carriers which used in-band signalling. People started playing with the phone system, in a way similar to the way modern day Cracker (computer security)|crackers play with the Internet.

Early phreaks, such as Joybubbles (né Joe Engressia), and Bill from New York started developing a rudimentary understanding on how the phone system works. Joybubbles taught himself to whistle a tone (Namely, 2600 hertz|2600Hz) that would cause a Trunking|trunk to reset itself. Bill discovered that a recorder he had could play the same tone with the same effect. This allowed control of phone systems that worked on SF, or Single Frequency controls. One could produce a long whistle to reset the line, then one could dial with groups of whistles (a short one for a "1", two short ones for a "2", etc.). This was the predecessor of Blue box|MFing.

While SF worked on certain phone routes, the most common signalling on the then long distance network was MF, or Multi-Frequency controls. The actual frequencies of the tones were unknown until 1964, when the Bell System itself released them in one of their journals. In an issue of the Bell System Technical Journal, an article containing the frequencies used for the digits that were used for inter office signalling were published for the engineers of the Bell System. What the BSTJ didn't realize at that time, was that the journal was also shipped to various college campuses across the United States. With this one article, the Bell System accidentally gave away the keys to the kingdom, and the phone system was at the disposal of anyone with a cursory knowledge of electronics.

People, at first engineers at colleges which received the BSTJ, started building devices that had the ability to produce these 'master tones' and allowed them to explore the side of the network that were not available to the general subscriber base. This device became known as the blue box; It came to be known as this because the first device confiscated by Bell System security was in a blue plastic case.

Other phreaks popped up around this time such as New York|New Yorkers Evan Doorbell, Ben Decibel, Neil R. Bell and California|Californians Mark Bernay, Al Bernay, and Chris Bernay, all who conducted their own independent exploration and experimentation of the telephone network, at first by themselves, then as they discovered other in their 'travels', as groups. Evan Doorbell formed with Ben and Neil a group of phreaks known as Group Bell. Mark Bernay started a similar group called the Mark Bernay Society. Both Mark and Evan are semi-famous characters in phone phreaking today for their internet publication of their collection of telephone exploration recordings. These recordings, conducted in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s are available at Mark's website Phone Trips. http://www.wideweb.com/phonetrips

In October 1971, phreaking was introduced to the masses when Esquire Magazine published a story called http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/esq-art.html Secrets of the Little Blue Box by Ron Rosenbaum. This article featured Joybubbles and John Draper prominently, which have made their names synonymous with the term Phreaking. The article attracted interest of other soon to be phreaks, such as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs of not yet formed Apple Computer. http://www.woz.org/letters/general/03.html

As the 1970s moved into the 1980s, the revolution of the personal computer created in an influx in tech savvy users, and also the popularity of computer bulletin board systems (BBS) that computer users dialed into with a modem. These BBSes became popular for computer hackers, and others who liked to tinker with technology. They also became popular for previously scattered independent phone phreaks to share their discoveries and experiments. This not only led to a collaboration between phone phreaks like never seen before, but 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 when monopoly AT&T was forced into divestiture. Computer hackers started to use phreaking skills to find telephone numbers for modems belonging to businesses, which they could exploit. Groups were formed around the BBS hacker/phreaking (H/P) community such as the famous Masters of Deception (Phiber Optik) and Legion of Doom (hacking)|Legion of Doom (Erik Bloodaxe (hacker)|Erik Bloodaxe) groups. In 1985 an underground e-zine called Phrack (a combination of the words Phreak and Hack) started circulation among BBSes, that focused on hacking, phreaking, and other related technology subjects.

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 created a re-emergence of phreaking as a subculture in the US, and also spread phreaking internationally.

2600 Hz

2600 Hz, the key to early phreaking, was a signal sent to the long-distance switch to indicate that the user had hung up the phone. At that point the call was not completely disconnected. Although the long-distance hardware thought the call was disconnected, the local user was still physically connected to their local crossbar — it knew that the user was still connected because the voltage never dropped. This left the system in an inconsistent state. The dialer was still connected to a long-distance trunk line and switch at the remote switching center that was perfectly willing to complete or further route calls.

A number of people in the 1960s discovered a loophole that resulted from this combination of features. The trick was to call a toll free number or long-distance directory number and then play the 2600 Hz tone into the line before the call was answered on the other side of the line. Then they simply dialed the number they actually wanted on a blue box, and the remote crossbar happily connected them for free. Of course when they were connected to the diverted call their local central office would be alerted and the technicians began searching for inordinately long directory calls or excessive dialing to particular toll free numbers. Many phone phreaks were forced to use pay telephones as the telephone company technicians regularly tracked long-distance toll free calls in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game.

As the knowledge spread, the growing number of phone phreaks became a minor culture unto their own. They were able to train their ears to determine how the long lines routed their calls. Sympathetic (or easily Social engineering (computer security)|social-engineered) telephone company employees gave them the various routing codes to use international satellites and various trunk lines like expert operators. The phone companies quickly caught on to the scheme and slowly deployed a number of systems to defeat it, but the phreaks felt that a true solution would be impossible because it would require adding hardware (a filter) to every line on every crossbar in the world. Unless the phone company replaced all their hardware, phreaking would be impossible to stop. AT&T instead turned to "the law" for help, and a number of the more famous phreaks were caught by the FBI.

Eventually, the phone companies in North America did, in fact, replace all their hardware. They didn't do it to stop the phreaks, but simply as a matter of course as they moved to fully digital switching systems. Unlike the crossbar, where the switching signals were carried on the same lines, the new systems used separate lines for signalling that the phreaks couldn't get to. This system is known as Common Channel Interoffice Signaling.

One box, two box, red box, blue box

Many phreaking techniques can be implemented with small electronic circuits, easily made by hobbyists once the secret of their operation is known. The first circuit to generate the switching tones needed to reroute long-distance calls was nicknamed the blue box by an early phreak who had built one in a blue enclosure. Soon, other types of phreaking circuits were given similar names.

At one point, pay telephones used specific tones (separate from the MF tones used for numbers) to signal the deposit of a coin. These tones, then used only for long distance and overseas calling, would signal the amount deposited to a tolling computer called ACTS(Telephone)|ACTS. Phreaks learned the frequencies used and produced circuits to spoof them. Such a device became known as a red box. It was also possible to call one pay phone from another and then simply record the sounds as coins were deposited in the first pay telephone. The phreaked call was then completed and when the operator asked for payment the phreak would play back the recording of the sounds (including the physical sound of the coins being deposited into the coin box) into mouthpiece of the telephone for the benefit of the operator. To combat this, telephone companies used myriad devices local to the payphone, including a muted handset. Red-boxing (the act of using red boxes) ceased to work in most areas in the 1980s when the phone companies installed a sensor that actually detected the coin falling into the box. Finally they moved this signaling out-of-band signaling|out-of-band completely. However, in some areas where telephone equipment was not upgraded until later, it remained effective into the 1990s. Even in the late 1990s (and perhaps later), it was still possible to defeat the local coin-drop switch on many analog phones by simply dialing the desired number with the long-distance prefix, since (apparently) the state of the local coin-drop switch could only be detected for local calls because (again, apparently) the call was routed out to long-distance equipment and back. Muted handsets could sometimes be defeated by dialing with operator assistance.

Dozens of other types of "boxes" were invented. In the Bulletin board system|BBS scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, crude ASCII art diagrams of phreaking box schematics circulated on bulletin board systems. Many of these designs simply cloned particular telephone features not usually accessible on residential phones, such as a hold button or the letter keys used in Autovon (the silver box). Many were useless, some were faulty, and some were pure hoaxes: for instance, a "Blotto Box" which would supposedly freeze an entire area code. Every phone in the area code would continue ringing as long as the box was receiving power, and no calls would be allowed in or out of an area code, and no calls would be allowed within the area code. The Blotto Box was named after its creator, King Blotto, and the validity of the Blotto Box isn't known.

Phone phreak Evan Doorbell took an unusual approach to "blueboxing." Instead of specialized devices to tap into the phone network, he used an ARP Odyssey keyboard synthesizer, which because of its capability of playing two notes at once (unlike virtually all other synthesizers of the period) was capable of producing not only 2600 Hz tones, but MF tones as well.

Modern day phreaking

Modern phreaking often involves taking advantage of companies' PBX|Private Branch Exchange systems, especially those which are accessible via toll-free telephone number|toll-free numbers, to make phone calls. It is common for phreakers to keep in contact with each other using voice mail and teleconference systems, the former found in most companies, the latter found in larger corporations. Many countries have country direct toll-free numbers. These are telephone numbers in one country which connect to a number in another country, often used to enable people to speak to an operator in their home country (and language), but also used by larger corporations and government organisations. Such systems are often used by phreaks, enabling easy collaboration between people from different countries (e.g. via voice mail systems), often allowing access to toll-free numbers in other countries (e.g. via PBX features) and thus a range of opportunities for new systems to abuse, occasionally allowing blue-boxing if they connect to a country with older switching gear. Blue boxing is rarely practised now though, if at all, because of the effort it requires to find suitable country-direct numbers and the low probability of success at seizing lines.

In the late 1990s phreaking and computer hacking saw enormous growth as hobbies and a subculture with the growing popularity of the Internet. New bulletin board systems were created, and texts from BBSes of the 1980s saw redistribution worldwide. 2600 Magazine, an independently distributed magazine for phone phreaks and hackers became popular and helped create an atmosphere of technology liberation, as well as informing hackers and phreaks of reader created 2600 Meetings as well as hacker conventions like DEF CON|DEFCON and H.O.P.E.. Modern-day phreaking is socially comprised of independently created zines(such as NPANXX), Bulletin board system|BBS's, and recently a trend in internet streaming media|streamed H/P radio programming|radio shows like Radio FreeK America http://www.oldskoolphreak.com and Binary Revolution Radio http://www.binrev.com. These radio shows often work together, hosting each other's data, or sharing hosts. This is not new, however. Since 1988 a radio show called Off the Hook with a hacking and phreaking format has been in production by Eric Gorden Corley|Eric Corley on WBAI 99.5 Megahertz|MHz in New York City. Off the Hook has been streaming their radio show since the late 1990s.

Phreakers do not always do illegal things. In fact, they may be thought of as a hacker in the computing world (one who toys with computers and programs on a local, benign basis, often to learn about what they are exploring) instead of a Security cracking|cracker (one who toys with computers and systems maliciously). Phreakers may just be interested in the telecommunication world, about the more unknown side of telephones. Examples of this may be ANACs and ringback numbers.

Phreaks have also taken a new interest in the recent creation of domestic VoIP providers like Vonage, Packet8, Stanaphone and open source PBX's like Asterisk PBX|Asterisk and sipXpbx that interface with VoIP Communications protocol|protocols, as well as the VXML language.

Famous phone phreaks

• Mark Abene (Phiber Optik)
• Mark Bernay
• Evan Doorbell
• John Draper (Captain Crunch)
• Joybubbles (Joe Engressia, The Whistler)
• Patrick Kroupa (Lord Digital)
• Kevin Mitnick (Condor)
• Kevin Poulsen (Dark Dante)
• Steve Wozniak (The Woz)
• Boris Floricic (Tron)
• Kyle Newberry (parenomen)
• William Quinn (Decoder)
• Lucky225 (Jered Morgan)

See also

• Hacking
• Cracking
• Phrack
• 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
• Phone Losers of America

External links

• Phreaks and Geeks
• Secrets of the Little Blue Box - article with photos
• Old Skool Phreak
• Nettwerked Dot Net
• West Coast Phreakers
• Phone Losers of America
• Phone Phun, a blog listing interesting telephone numbers
• Binary Revolution Forums: Phreaking Forum
• Daily Phreak: Daily Telecom, Asterisk, and Phreaking Updates
• Teamp Phreak: home of npanxx

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