Phreaking is a slang Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo . It is also used to identify with one's peers term coined to describe the activity of a subculture In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong, for example, if a particular subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be described as a counterculture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. As telephone networks have become computerized, phreaking has become closely linked with computer hacking In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers, but does no harm, usually for fun or just the challenge. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground but is now an open community. Hackers are people who are motivated by curiosity and adventurer's spirit.[1] This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with H standing for hacking and P standing for phreaking).
The term phreak is a portmanteau A portmanteau (pronounced /pɔrtmænˈtoʊ/ , plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) or portmanteau word is used to mean a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes and their meanings into one new word. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes of the words phone The telephone , often colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sound, most commonly the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to one another. It is one of the most common household and freak, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency. Loosely speaking, 1 year is the period of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, and the Earth's rotation on its axis has to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking. A large percentage of the phone Phreaks were blind.[2][3] Because identities were usually masked, an exact percentage cannot be calculated.
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History
Switch hook and tone dialer
Possibly one of the first phreaking methods was switch-hooking. It is considered softcore because it has almost negligible toll fraud potential. Nevertheless it allows placing calls from a phone where the rotary dial or keypad has been disabled by a key lock or other means to prevent unuthorized 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, and then keeping intervals of roughly one second, the caller can dial numbers as if they were using the rotary dial. The pulse counter in the exchange counts the pulses or clicks and interprets them in two possible ways. Depending on continent and country, one click with a following interval can be either "one" or "zero" and subsequent clicks before the interval are additively counted. This renders ten consecutive clicks being either "zero" or "nine", respectively. Some exchanges allow using additional clicks for special controls, but numbers 0-9 now fall in one of these two standards. One special code, "flash", is a very short single click, possible but hard to simulate. Back in the day of rotary dial, very often technically identical phone sets were marketed in multiple areas of the world, only with plugs matched by country and the dials being bezeled with the local standard numbers.
Such key-locked telephones, if wired to a modern DTMF capable exchange, can also be exploited by a tone dialer that generates the DTMF tones used by modern keypad units. These signals are now very uniformly stadardized worldwide, and along with rotary dialing, they are almost all that is left of in-band signaling. It is notable that the two methods can be combined: Even if the exchange does not support DTMF, the key lock can be circumvented by switch-hooking, and the tone dialer can be then used to operate automated DTMF controlled services that can't be used with rotary dial.
2600 hertz
Main article: 2600 hertz 2600 Hz is the frequency in hertz that AT&T formerly put as a steady signal on any long-distance telephone line that was not currently in useThe precise origins of phone phreaking are unknown, although it is believed[who?] that phreak-like experimentation began with widespread deployment of automatic switches In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls. A central office is the physical building used to house inside plant equipment including telephone switches, which make telephone calls "work" in the sense of making connections and relaying the on the telephone networks. In the United States, AT&T AT&T Inc. is the largest provider of fixed telephony in the United States, and also provides broadband and subscription television services. AT&T is the second largest provider of mobile telephony service in the United States, with over 90.1 million wireless customers, and more than 210 million total customers began introducing automatic switches for long distance and certain forms of trunking In modern communications, trunking is a concept by which a communications system can provide network access to many clients by sharing a set of lines or frequencies instead of providing them individually. This is analogous to the structure of a tree with one trunk and many branches. Examples of this include telephone systems and the VHF radios carriers in the mid-to-late 1950s. With the introduction of these switches, the general population began, for the first time, to interact with computing power on a large scale. Phreaking can be viewed as an extension of this, where individuals interested in computers and technology, yet unable to further that interest for a variety of reasons, turned to the only available option: the computer controlled telephone network.[original research?]
AT&T's fully automatic switches use tone dialing, a form of in-band signaling, and include some tones which are for internal telephone company use. One internal use tone is a tone of 2600 Hz which causes a telephone switch to think the call was over, and could be exploited to provide free long-distance and international calls.[4]
The tone was discovered in approximately 1957,[4] by Joe Engressia Joybubbles – August 8, 2007), born Josef Carl Engressia, Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, USA, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. Gifted with perfect pitch, he was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone (see Blue box). Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of “172 or something.” Joybubbles died, a blind seven-year old boy. Engressia was skilled with perfect pitch Absolute pitch , widely referred to as perfect pitch, is the ability of a person to identify or recreate a musical note without the benefit of an external reference, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C This is a virtual keyboard showing the absolute frequencies in hertz , of the notes on a modern piano (typically containing 88 keys) in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A4), tuned to 440 Hz (referred to as A440). Each successive pitch is derived by multiplying (ascending) or dividing (descending) the previous (a frequency of 2600 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. This was the beginning of his love of exploring the telephone system.[4]
Other early phreaks, such as "Bill from New York", began to develop a rudimentary understanding of how phone networks worked. Bill discovered that a recorder The English Flute or recorder is a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct flutes — whistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle and ocarina. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple. It is distinguished from other he owned could also play the tone at 2600 Hz with the same effect. John Draper discovered through his friendship with Engressia that the free whistles given out in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes also produced a 2600 Hz tone when blown (providing his nickname, "Captain Crunch"). This allowed control of phone systems that worked on single frequency (SF) controls. One could sound a long whistle to reset the line, followed by groups of whistles (a short tone for a "1", two for a "2", etc.) to dial numbers.
Multi frequency
Main article: Multi-frequency In telephony, multi-frequency signaling is an outdated, in-band signaling technique. Numbers were represented in a two-out-of-five code for transmission from a multi-frequency sender, to be received by a multi-frequency receiver in a distant telephone exchange. MF was used for signaling in trunking applications, and is a precursor of modern DTMFWhile Single Frequency worked on certain phone routes, the most common signaling on the then long distance network was Multi-Frequency In telephony, multi-frequency signaling is an outdated, in-band signaling technique. Numbers were represented in a two-out-of-five code for transmission from a multi-frequency sender, to be received by a multi-frequency receiver in a distant telephone exchange. MF was used for signaling in trunking applications, and is a precursor of modern DTMF Controls. The slang term for these tones and their use was "Marty Freeman." The specific frequencies required were unknown until 1964, when Bell Systems The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and AT&T led organization that provided telephone service in the United States from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, a Federal mandate broke the company up into separate companies published the information in the Bell System Technical Journal Bell Labs Technical Journal is the in-house journal for scientists of Bell Labs/Alcatel-Lucent. It is published quarterly by John Wiley & Sons in an article describing the methods and frequencies used for inter-office signalling. The journal was intended for the company's engineers; however, it found its way 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 intricacies of the phone system were at the disposal of anyone with a cursory knowledge of electronics.[citation needed]
The second generation of phreaks arose at this time, including the New Yorkers New York City, the most populous city in the United States, is known for its status as a financial, cultural, transportation, and manufacturing center, and for its history as a gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both state and "Evan Doorbell", "Ben Decibel" and Neil R. Bell and Californians Mark Bernay, Chris Bernay, and "Alan from Canada". Each conducted their own independent exploration and experimentation of the telephone network, initially on an individual basis, and later within groups as they discovered each other in their travels. "Evan Doorbell", "Ben" and "Neil" formed a group of phreaks known as Group Bell. Mark Bernay initiated a similar group named the Mark Bernay Society. Both Mark and Evan received fame amongst today's phone phreakers for 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.[5]
Blue boxes
Main article: Blue boxIn October 1971, phreaking was introduced to the masses when Esquire Magazine Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich published a story called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box"[6] by Ron Rosenbaum Ron Rosenbaum is an American journalist and author. 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 Wozniak has several nicknames, including "The Woz", "Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "iWoz" . "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is also the name of a company Wozniak founded. He is sometimes known as the "Other Steve" of Apple Computer, the better known Steve being co-founder Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs is an American business magnate and inventor. He is well known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, who went on to found Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite[7].
1971 also saw the beginnings of YIPL (Youth International Party Line), a publication started by Abbie Hoffman Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was an American social and political activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and Al Bell to provide information to Yippies The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a more radically youth-oriented and countercultural offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s. It was founded in 1968. They employed theatrical gestures — such as advancing a pig as a candidate for President in 1968 — to mock the social status on how to "beat the man," mostly involving telephones. In 1973, Al Bell would move YIPL over and start TAP (Technology Assistance Program). TAP would develop into a major source for subversive technical information among phreaks and hackers all over the world. TAP ran from 1973 to 1984, with Al Bell handing over the magazine to "Tom Edison" in the late 70's. TAP ended publication in 1984 due mostly to a break-in and arson at Tom Edison's residence in 1983[8]. Cheshire Catalyst then took over running the magazine for its final (1984) year.
A controversially suppressed article "How to Build a 'Phone Phreaks' box" in Ramparts Magazine (June, 1972) touched off a firestorm of interest in phreaking. This article published simple schematic plans of a "black box" used to receive free long distance phone calls, and included a very short parts list that could be used to construct one. Bell sued Ramparts which forced 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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Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:24:27 GMT+00:00
TechRepublic (blog) Hacking was often associated with phreaking - which referred to unauthorized access and use of the telephone network. One of the oldest and most revered ...
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