Phone Phreaking - Expert Advice Needed!

[whitehat]

I know this is a long shot (since it's 2012), but we don't have any Phone Phreaks in the house, do we?

There's an older guy I have known for a couple of years from a Commodore club -- a real old school phone phreak. I respect the heck out of him and we normally get along really well, but we're having a little friendly disagreement right now, which has given way to him phone phreaking me a bit. He somehow made my calls forward to an adult bookstore and their calls forward to me.

It's in good fun, but obviously I want to hit him back. I have read old proto-hacker stories about phone phreaking, but I don't know any decent tricks that I can pull off on the modern phone system, other than Caller ID spoofing. I suppose a lot of it is social engineering; though I'm not really good at that at all.

Any suggestions, thoughts, tips, tricks, useful stories, or related download links?

Edited September 29, 2012 by whitehat

[digip]

I've never delved into the phone scene, but he might have found something like an asterisk box or voice over IP system at the adult bookstore and found a way to use a home asterisk box and various voice over IP services to somehow bounce the calls to you. Either that, or he physically has access to their phone system and setup the call forwarding somehow. Most everything today is digital, but sure you could still find some actual phone wiring boxes in some parts of the world where you can cross wire number routing. I think thats what Kevin Mitnick did when he was on the run, has rewired the phones to point to someone elses address when he used it to make calls, the FBI showed up at some poor old guys house expecting it to be him.

If he did physical rewiring somewhere I assume it would look something similar to this(punch down block, not the tapping part), but again, I don't know much about the phone scene and what all the cool kids do today:

Edited September 29, 2012 by digip

[Pwnd2Pwnr]

I know that a lot of the "phreak" payphones are becoming more digitized. Let me be clear with one thing; it has been about 2 decades since I was getting my phreak on. My uncle and I (more him, since he was the sauter expert) built a RED BOX with certain modulators that emulated the sound of the coin drop. It was pretty complicated to a young child, as I was once yesteryear.

On the other hand, TELNETs are still in use today, but they communicate through a PBX server (someone here should correct me if I am wrong, but I am going off of memory at the moment). The PBX server may be outdated, but I have a LCOM magazine around here somewhere.

If you are serious about getting into the dark, seedy world of phreaking, you are going to have to bone up on telnet data and how it is moved throughout any given means; console or otherwise.

I am going to say again, though, take this with a grain of salt. It has been a long time since I have gotten down with that type of stuff because I got caught up in chasing girls and being "popular" (wish I would have never done that... I would probably not be in the financial hardship I am in now).

Well, ya guys did it again... I am going to research some of my old books I got lying around. I will get back to this post.

I am getting old *sigh*... I am really behind on what was... but hey, having kids and a family will do that to ya.

Here is a little tidbit of info that I found.

http://www.historyof...ing.org/faq.php

Edited September 29, 2012 by Pwnd2Pwnr

[bobbyb1980]

You can read up on "beige boxes" and splicing phone chords and how to hook into a line. If you search around your house and look for stuff like digip posted, you'll probably find it.

Edited September 29, 2012 by bobbyb1980

[digip]

Most punchdown blocks are on like street corners for neighborhoods in the city, some old ones were in little green or blue rectangular cases in my neighborhood in the 80's, but that pic in the video is probably for a business or apartment buildings incoming phone systems or such. At the residential side, on your house, you open the box, its usually just a few wires in 1 of which does nothing (forget, think its 4 wires, one send, receive and ground and 4th does nothing) and they tie in from the street to split out to your home wiring. Most homes don't have big punch down blocks like that.

We had them at work for the internal phone network in several parts of the building, so he might have gotten access to one at the adult book stores area and knows how to re-wire them and set them up. Someone at my highschool back in the day, had reprogrammed the one near the school, and if you picke dit up to make a call, you heard like 30 peopel talking like it was a party line, but that was back in the 90's. Not sure how much of that stuff is still wired like that out there, where as most everuthing today is all digital and fiber until they reach your home, where they split off the poles to your home. Guess it depends where you live too and what parts of the world you live in.

Edited September 29, 2012 by digip

[whitehat]

This has all been great stuff, thank you guys. Please let me know if you think of anything else. I liked the YouTube video; thanks DigiP. I will be watching to see if Pwnd2Pwnr finds anything in the books he mentioned.

I've got my research cut out for me. I will look up all the topics you guys mentioned that I was not familiar with (pretty much everything except the red and blue boxes). For my own education if not for immediate use.

[Pwnd2Pwnr]

This has all been great stuff, thank you guys. Please let me know if you think of anything else. I liked the YouTube video; thanks DigiP. I will be watching to see if Pwnd2Pwnr finds anything in the books he mentioned.

I've got my research cut out for me. I will look up all the topics you guys mentioned that I was not familiar with (pretty much everything except the red and blue boxes). For my own education if not for immediate use.

Guess what? I found a hack that, from what the webpage says (My Anarch. cookbook is no where to be found) the RED BOXES still work at some locales.

Here are two links that should get you going in the right path.

http://wiki.docdroppers.org/index.php?title=Beginner's_Guide_to_Phreaking

[digip]

Yeah, from what I recall, the payphones today, they added in white noise thats not in the human audible range, that is included with the tones and is all digital now, so unless you took apart the actual phone to click the coin mech to trigger credits(like we used to do on old pinball machines in vending class) they can now filter out the tones. However, from what I understand,not every phone system, nor every payphone is digital, and in some parts of the world, including the US, they still have places that tone dialers apparently work on. I always laugh when I watch Wargames and there is the scene when David Lightman uses the soda can tab to make the phone call. I winder if that actually worked at all, or was more Hollywood than anything else, but thats one of those movie things that always sits in my head like in the movie Hackers, where they talk about recording the coin drops with a tape recorder, which also used to work back in the day, but like I said, they filter that out now by adding in special tones we can't hear and is all digital frequencies done internally and sent down the line when the coin mech triggers the tone and special signal, its all digital in most places.

Edited September 30, 2012 by digip

[caffeine]

I always laugh when I watch Wargames and there is the scene when David Lightman uses the soda can tab to make the phone call. I winder if that actually worked at all, or was more Hollywood than anything else

Yes it did.

In the junior high school I went to, we would put a paperclip between the mouthpiece and the metal coinbox. There might have been static when you did that.. I can't remember. Anyways, with that wire there, you could dial a number and not have to pay.

[Pwnd2Pwnr]

I want a Jawbreaker!

[hfam]

mmmm...man,the good ol' days!! Redbox, Bluebox, ToneLoc for the PBXs....glad to see some old skewlers here!

Sounds like you got an ol' fashioned pwnin' behind the woodshed.

My recommendation?

Cry uncle.

Mend your fences, hat in hand, show the guy some additional respect, and once you've sufficiently grovelled and eaten a large helping of humble pie, take him to dinner (a nice one, not the fuckin' Sizzler), and have him show you what he knows.

You have an opportunity to have someone who obviously knows WTF they're doing show you the ropes. It's what you want, no? Why not turn some social engineering into a positive and befriend this guy again.

Also, unless you're living in some isolated analog-based hamlet in a cave somewhere, I'm going to go with good old social engineering on this one, which as many (including myself) who know, will tell you that's as an important part of phreaking as any technical knowledge.

Turn your lemons into lemonade. You got your ass handed to you, now:

- Cry uncle

- Show this guy some respect

- Refriend

- Acquire knowledge

- ??????

- Profit

Let us know how it turns out! :)

[krypt3dkn1gh7]

Did you ever find out? Haha that is pretty awesome!