How I was a phone phreaker

picture to attract attention.



Phreaking , sometimes phreaking, is a fraud associated with telephone (and, more recently, mobile) networks, one of the subspecies of hacking. A source

English Wikipedia



In the distant 90s, in addition to the main work, I earned my living by making and selling AON calls (phones with number identification). I lived in a small provincial town of up to 50 thousand inhabitants. For spare parts for Caller ID, I went to Moscow, to the radio market, which at that time was located in Tushino. Thanks to my hobby, I had an idea about the work of telephone networks.

It all started with a note in the newspaper "Arguments and Facts" bought at the railway station for a short time. In it, I read a note about 2 foreigners caught who made international calls from a regular payphone. To me, she sunk into my head, I began to think how this could be implemented.

At that time, the overwhelming number of payphones did not have a telephone number (not determined by caller ID) or had a telephone number with category “3” (without the right to dial a long-distance call). With a payphone it was not possible to call on the intercity. I checked international payphones in the city, they were all on regular telephone numbers with category "1". The telephone number of the international payphone was written in the booth on a special label.

My home phone belonged to the oldest of three PBXs in our city, unlike other PBXs in the city, it was not identified by callers, and in order to make a long-distance call I had to dial 8 phone number where I want to call my phone number. The PBX disconnected me, and re-dialed again, then connected to the dialed number.



I want to note that in the middle of 90 I read about the Internet only in computer magazines, and we did not have a single provider in the city. The information was taken from nowhere, it was also not published in magazines.

I understood that the access to the long distance is provided by a long-distance PBX which is located in the regional center, and in order to know where to invoice the phone, after dialing it gives out its number in the tone mode. At one of the PBX in our city, this answer was heard. Multi-frequency tone signal in front of the buzzer, it was not audible at another PBX.

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Together with a friend, we recorded the answer of his PBX to a tape recorder. I went home and after dialing 8s I tried to play it through a capacitor into the telephone line, nothing came of it. I again went into thought, among a multitude of thoughts and conjectures one appeared, the problem of the discrepancy between the speeds of playing tape recorders and the mismatch of frequencies. The next day I was at home with a friend's tape recorder. After 8-ki and playing a tone signal to the line, I heard the buzzer of the international station. I did not believe my success. I tried again - the buzzer. I decided to call on the intercity. The call went through, I talked with my friend from another city. Joy knew no bounds. I was looking forward to seeing a friend for his long-distance telephone calls. It was a conversation on intercity, which I made from my phone. Now I could call on intercity at the expense of a friend.



I understood the principle of work and I had a working prototype. Now it was necessary to create a device that generated the necessary keys in line. Later, I found out that this device is called the “Bluebox”, and Steve Wozniak invented it 15 years before. And if you believe the Internet, they once traded Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Then, because of my lack of internet, I did not know that. And I had to invent everything myself.

A source



For a couple of months, I created a digital device that converted the dialed number into a tone sequence. I got the opportunity to make long-distance / international calls for free, substituting other numbers. At first, I substituted the numbers of our local telephones of automata, then the telephone numbers of regional telephones of automata to confuse the tracks.



Even when my phone was transferred to a digital PBX, I was able to substitute another number, though not with 100% probability.

And everything ended with the advent of the Internet, mobile phones, long-distance communication was not so expensive, maybe I began to get enough money to pay for it, or maybe it just grew.

“Bluebox” most likely is lying somewhere in the garage, if it wasn’t thrown out, it hasn’t been seen for a long time.