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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 computer hacking. This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with H standing for Hacking and P standing 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 hackers 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, 2600Hz) that would cause a trunk to reset itself. Bill discovered that a recorder he had could play the same tone with the same effect. John Draper discovered through his friend, Joybubbles, that the free whistles given out in Captain Crunch cereal boxes made exactly a 2600 tone when blown, hence how he got his nickname, "Captain Crunch". 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 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 Yorkers Evan Doorbell, Ben Decibel, Neil R. Bell and Californians Mark Bernay, Al Bernay, Chris Bernay, and Alan from Canada. All of these phreaks conducted their own independent exploration and experimentation of the telephone network, at first by themselves, then as they discovered each 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. *

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 Joybubbles and John Draper prominently, which has 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. *

As a sidebar, social-engineering enabled phone phreaking was possible which involved little technical savvy. In particular, one could call many phone booths collect in the 1960s and the savvy co-conspirator would simply accept the charges.

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 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 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 (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-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 Man.

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.

The End of MF

The end of MF phreaking in the lower 48 United States occurred on June 15th, 2006. The last exchange in the continental United States to use a "phreakable" MF-signalled trunk replaced the aging (yet still well kept) N2 carrier with a T-1 carrier. This exchange was located in Wawina, MN, (218)-488. This particular exchange was run by the Northern Telephone Company of Minnesota. The days building up to the cutover were comparatively eventful, as many phone phreaks from across North America and the world made calls into what was the last group of MF-able inward trunks in the continental United States. A message board was set up on +1 (218) 488-1307, for phone phreaks across the world to "say their goodbyes" to MF signalling and the N2 in Wawina. During the days prior to the cutover, many famous phone phreaks such as Mark Bernay, Joybubbles, Bob Bernay, and Captain Crunch could be heard leaving their comments on the message board. The official date for the cutover from N2 to T-carrier was Wednesday, June 14th. As early as June 7th, there was a noticeable static on what had previously been clear lines. By Monday, June 12th, many numbers were unreachable, and the static had peaked. The recording on +1 (218) 488-1307 was generally inaccessible, and MFing through the switch was becoming increasingly more difficult due to the increased static. By the 15th, the end had come.

The cutover occurred around 1:38, Eastern Daylight Time. The Wawina switchmen had disallowed any more incoming calls to the N2 system, however, a few phreaks were still on the lines. The last two phone phreaks to sit on a telephone-company-operated MF trunk in the continental United States were Lucky225 and Josh from Pittsburgh. Lucky and Josh were idling in a conference, from the N2 side. A few phone phreaks were sitting on the same conference, but coming in through the T-carrier or the Collector's Network. Later on, another phone phreak, Jayson Smith, pulsed 2600 through the Collector's Network (which does not respond to 2600 Hz or MF tones). That indicated to all parties on the N2 that the called party had hung up, which in turn winked off Lucky and Josh's last remaining trunks, and ended the last two inbound calls ever made on the Wawina N2. Shane, the switchman running the operation, then placed a ceremonial "last call" from the central office, and shut down the system for good.

Famous phone phreaks

See also

External links

Phreaking | Telephony | Portmanteaus

Phreaking | Phreaking | Piratage téléphonique | Phreaking | פריקינג | Phreaking | Phreaker | Фрикинг | Phreaking

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Phreaking".

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