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Telephone Free Planet Issue 01
=------------------------------------------------------------------=
|Vol. 1 No. 1 Telephone Free Planet Issue 1|
| www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/bay/5347 |
| October 31, 1997 - Happy Halloween! |
=------------------------------------------------------------------=
=---------------------"If TFP were a river, it'd stink."---------------------=
=-------------------Telecommunications-------------------=
| Welcome to Telephone Free Planet.............KungFuFox |
| Halloween fun for little phreaks.............KungFuFox |
| Homemade acoustic couplers...................PADmaster |
| COCOTs........................................shamr0ck |
| Basics of telephony........................AlienPhreak |
| Finding numbers..............................KungFuFox |
=------------------TFP Special Features------------------=
| Telco News...................................KungFuFox |
| TFP's Party in the Mailroom........................TFP |
| Land-o-Logs..........................Readers like you! |
| Storytime with TFP..........Whoever bothered to submit |
=--------------------------------------------------------=
"What benefits has the CONSUMER seen from payphone deregulation?"
"Absolutely NONE. The COCOT, and associated inmate-calling and AOS
industries are among the sleaziest, worst-telecom-educated parts of
the telecom industry. Payphone "deregulation", in my opinion, amounts
to a license to abuse the public, even more so than it already has.
It cannot be allowed to happen." -Stanley Cline
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------=
| Telephone Free Planet - contacts and crap |
=-------------------------------------------=
Alpha dog : KungFuFox, mazer@cycat.com <-send me hatemail!
Beta dog : Keystroke, keystroke@thepentagon.com
TFP Email : tfp@geocities.com <-send us stuff!
our mile-long url-> TFP Site : www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/bay/5347
Cult follower weirdos : digipimp, AlienPhreak, BC219, weatherman,
REality, and Scud-O
Submissions of articles, quotes, funny emails, irc logs, phone conversations,
news articles, and general crap are encouraged. tfp@geocities.com needs you!
This document is for educational purposes only. TFP and its writers will not
be held liable for your actions. Just read it and be happy, ok? If you wanna
reprint any portion of this document, just email tfp@geocities.com and ask.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------------=
| Welcome to Telephone Free Planet - by KungFuFox |
=-------------------------------------------------=
The world of phreaking isn't as fun as it used to be, seeing as the telcos
are actually fixing holes and making things generally harder to mess with.
I guess there's no sense crying about it, but throwing some eggs at linemen
sure helps. It's amazing what linemen will say when they're angry. The point
I'm skipping around is that the vehicle of telco knowledge is going about as
fast as a geo metro full of fat people right now.
There's plenty of fun stuff left to do with phones, people have just gotta
find that stuff and spread the word. If operators start getting back their
peace of mind we'll have to work even harder to get 'em all depressed and
nervous again. We can't live forever off the trashing, social engineering,
and prank calling that's already been done, and that's where TFP comes in.
Telephone Free Planet would like to make the world of unauthorized telephony
all peppy and nifty again, and hopefully by throwing some crappy new material
into a file and begging you to read it every once in a while we can
accomplish that goal. We know that right now you're all stuck on PLA46 with
nothing fun to do, so we're tryin to do something about it. Sure, TFP will
probably be another dead 'good idea' zine in a few days, but trying is a
swell idea, so we're gonna try our darndest.
You're probably wondering what the hell the name is about, and that is a
legitimate concern. Our research and development labs have concluded that
there are three possible interpretations of the name.
The name Telephone Free Planet could be a parallel to Radio Free Europe, a
non profit corporation broadcasting to, or formerly broadcasting to, six
communist nations in Europe. Their radio programs were designed to provide
news about the 'outside world' to the communist nations being kept in the
dark, much as we hope to provide news that the telephone companies are
attempting to keep us in the dark about.
The name could also allude to a planet without phones. A less distant, less
complicated world where there are no phones to mess with, or to abuse and
call people in Mongolia just to ask how kid meat tastes. A planet free of
telephones wouldn't be so great in that regard, but then again operators
wouldn't exist and neither would phone taps. Oh well.
The final oh-so-witty explanation for our name could be an indirect statement
of our desire to make the price of a phonecall free. A planet in a world
where one could telephone freely, without regard for expensive bills that you
darn sure don't wanna pay. A world where the telephone industry is about
communication, not about sapping the customers for all they're worth.
So there you have it, Telephone Free Planet, a zine for people who really
like phones n stuff. Of course, the telco people will probably end up calling
it "those bastards who did such and such" because they have a problem with
people who taunt and steal from them. Weirdos.
Oh yeah, if you haven't noticed already, there seems to be a lot of stuff
written by a guy named, oh, lets just say 'fox', to keep his anonymity. He
can't keep writing forever, see? If you don't contribute to TFP it'll die! So
send some crap to tfp@geocities.com, okee dokee? And if you'd like to be in
the make-believe phoneboys cult, just let us know. We have unlimited cult
spaces left to fill, and it's an unlimited time offer, so don't hurry.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------------=
| Halloween fun for little phreaks - by KungFuFox |
=-------------------------------------------------=
I'd be remiss if I didn't write something about Halloween, seeing as it's the
occasion of TFP's birth, and it's a darn good holiday besides. It's also the
one day of the year that your neighbors come outside. More people are outside
today than on any other day of the year. Most of them aren't even five feet
tall yet. Rather than waste your time stealing candy from those little humans
whose only concept of the spirit of Halloween is getting candy from the
neighbors, try phreaking for a change. Operators work on holidays too you
know.
There are benefits and detriments to phreaking in the field when there are
hundreds of people roaming your neighborhood. The most obvious benefit being
that those people are creating a diversion by disturbing all of your
neighbors with demands for so damn much candy. I can't decide whether they
reduce or increase suspicion of illegal activity, seeing as the neighbors
who're aroused by sounds of a beigeboxer in their midst may think "oh, it's
just some little fuckers wanting candy", but they may think "some bastard is
plugging a phone into my TNI again! I'm gonna cut his friggin' arms off with
my chainsaw!". You don't really know how they'll react.
If the kids in your neighborhood are stupid assholes they're gonna be a
problem. You can't just be creeping around in the shadows hoping for secrecy
when there are little eyes watching you. If those little eyes belong to a
tattle tale, you can be certain that (s)he is going to start screaming or
telling everyone (s)he's with, that some crazy kid with a phone is walkin
around in peoples' yards. If the kid is just stupid (s)he will wanna know
what you're doing, and will probably end up inadvertently getting you caught
anyway.
Things to do once you've found safety under a compost covered tarp and hooked
up your beigebox:
1. Prank the operator
2. Prank the operator a couple hundred times
3. Prank the operator's superior
4. Prank the operator's superior a couple hundred times
*WARNING* Do not try #5 under any circumstances; it is evil. You could die.
5. Make the occupants of the home you're beiging from think that their home
has been possessed.
Step 1: I'm not going to be very descriptive about this step, but you need to
make a device to convert the power from an outside electrical socket on your
victim's home into a voltage and amperage that the phones in the house will
think is a ring signal. Phones that get ring signals ring, right?
Use resistors to bring down the amperage.
Step 2: Make yourself a power outlet short-circuit doohickey. A paperclip
works fine. Bend it into a shape that will fit into the socket you found.
Don't put it in there stupid, just save it for now. Oh, better have some
insulated pliers too.
Step 3: Get the ball rolling. Call some ANAC and get the house's number.
Start calling the house. Your phone better not have a ringer on it, or you're
gonna be found out, so loose the ringer. If you're calling from their line,
it's either gonna give you that "the number you have reached is a party on
your line" message, and ask that you hangup, or it'll be busy, right? If it's
a busy signal, get a friend to start calling the house. If it gives you the
message, that means the person in the house isn't gonna hear a damn thing
when they answer. After doing this about 10 times, maybe more, maybe less,
the victim will loose his/her tolerance and take the phone off the hook.
Step 4: Now's when the real fun begins. Plug that voltage converter/ringer
thingy into the socket and send some AC down the line. Phones don't ring when
they're off the hook do they? This aught to scare the crap outta whoever is
in the house once they realize that they really did hang up and it really is
ringing anyway. Keep it ringing for a good while, then stop. Hold off for 2
or 3 minutes, and start again. This will kill that victim's peace of mind if
nothing else has.
Step 5: Use that short circuit thing. Unplug the voltage converter, and
making sure your hands only touch the insulated part of the pliers, clasp the
paperclip in the pliers and shove it in the socket. Release the pliers from
the paperclip, pack up your shit, and run. If you did this right the power in
the house just cut off, because the circuit breaker tripped.
Step 6: (optional) You may want to accent the fear of this situation by
lighting the front doorway on fire. Wait till there are relatively few
trick-or-treaters within range, then with your freshly bought can of lighter
fluid, spray the doorway all the way around. Spray it a few times for good
measure. If the doorway is made of metal, spray the ground directly in front
of the door. Make a pentagram if you like. Once it's all soaked in nice, bang
on the door three times as loud as you possibly can. Kick it if you think you
can make a louder noise that way. Now light the doorway or the puddle on the
ground and get the hell outta there. Happy Halloween neighbor.
If you really don't wanna phreak or your neighborhood and surrounding
neighborhoods just don't seem safe enough, you can just sit a bowl of candy
on your doorstep with a sign that says "please only take one", perch yourself
and your pump-action pellet gun in a tree in the front yard of your home, and
wait for somebody to defy your friendly message. Show 'em some good ol'
Halloween spirit. If you'd like, you could just stalk them the whole night
and fire at them whenever you feel like it. Spoil their evening for being so
evil and stealing your candy. A couple well placed pellet holes in their bags
of candy should make their evening of begging and stealing even less
enjoyable.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------=
| Homemade acoustic couplers - by PADmaster |
=-------------------------------------------=
Commercial acoustic couplers, while allowing excellent transfer speeds, are
also costly. While looking at prices awhile back, the least expensive model I
could find was $145; well beyond the range of my budget of $0. I could not do
without, so I decided to build one myself. It would most likely not be
capable of attaining the 24,000bps speeds of the commercial one, but since
all my laptop had was a 2400 bauder, I wasn't really worried about speed.
Construction
It is assumed that the reader has some knowledge of electronic circuit design
and construction (i.e., they know what a soldering iron is, and how to use
one). The coupler is constructed from two 741 operational amplifiers. If one
cannot locate or afford them, or wish to reduce the circuit to something more
compact, then half of an LM324 quad op-amp can be used. However, I do suggest
using the 741's, as it would make construction less confusing (as well as
less wasteful of op-amps). I used two small 8-ohm speakers as the speaker and
microphone. One may have better luck with using an electret microphone, but
it would take some redesigning of one of the amplifiers. The method with
which you secure the coupler to the receiver also impacts it's operation.
And, the better you can acoustically insulate both elements from outside
noise, the cleaner your connection will be, not to mention faster.
Parts list:
U1, U2- 741 op amps (or one LM324 quad op amp)
R1, R3- 1.2K
R2, R4- 2.2K
S1- SPST toggle
SP1, SP2- 8 ohm speakers, (preferably around 1" diameter). If you decide to
use the speakers from a pair of headphones, the ear cushions on
the Sony MDR-V50 are excellent
Figure 1 (coupler schematic)
___ v+
+ 9v - \_/ SP1 ^ v+ ___
| | | o rj11 o ^ \_/ SP2
^ ^ | | |\ | | | | | |
| | | | | \ U1 | | |\ | | |
o | | `------|+ \____ __, . | \ U2 | |
/ @---. = | / @ ------|+ \____ ____, |
S1 / | | ,-|- / | | / @ =
| | | ,-/\/\/-@ |/ | | ,-|- / |
V V = | R1 | | | ,-/\/\/-@ |/ | |
v+ v- | | V | | R3 | | |
= | v- | | | V |
| | = | v- |
`---/\/\/---' | |
R2 `---/\/\/---'
R4
As you can see from the schematic (Figure 1), the coupler consists of two
non-inverting amplifiers. The provided resistor values gives each amp a gain
of 2.8. These values can be changed, if you want higher gain, or simply don't
have anything with the above values handy. Just follow the formula:
Gain = 1+(R2/R1)
Observing this, a gain of 11 can be had with R1 as 100 And R2 as 1K, or R1
as 1K and R2 as 10K.
Once you complete the circuit itself, you need a reliable way to hold it all
together. I suggest using a board, about 2" wide, and as long as your average
reciever. The speakers are attached on either end, and on the other side, in
the middle, the project box containing the amplifiers.
In order to couple the signals to the reciever reliably, I suggest using the
speakers from a good pair of headphones (one where the wiring inside the jack
has come loose, a common fate of cheap and expensive headphones alike). The
ear-cushions are perfect, as long as you mount the speakers at an angle as to
mate with the reciever.
To secure it in the middle, I suggest using a velcro strap, fastened at the
middle on the back of the coupler, and long enough to give it a good hold on
the reciever. Of course, you could always use rubber bands, if you don't mind
a ghettoish look. Refer to figure 2 for my simplistic drawing of this.
Figure 2 (completed coupler)
|---| |---|
.|___|_________|___|.
|___________________|
| |
|_______|
`--> to modem
Testing
Find a number that is toll-free (unless you have an old rotary-dial at home,
which is a near enough match to the dimensions of a payphone's reciever). Set
your terminal to 300 baud, dial, and let it connect. It should connect,
unless the construction of the coupler is really shoddy, or you are on one of
those bootleg staticy COCOTs. In that case, move on to a different phone. At
any rate, if you are successful at connecting at 300 baud, hang up, and move
onto 1200, then 2400, and so on. Sooner or later, you will hit your maximum
connection speed.
Connection speed may rely heavily on the payphone you use. As I stated
earlier, some COCOTs can have static out the wazoo. I recommend the nice
older Bell payphones, they are generally reliable. As for the no-name brand
of COCOT (You may know them as the kind you can't redbox off), I personally
wouldn't chance wasting my quarter.
Other uses for a coupler could be connecting to a digital PBX through a
phone. Or, you could perhaps stick the coupler onto the side of your laptop,
and place a reciever there in a situation where you don't feel like crawling
under a table or whatnot to plug your phone cord in. Or, you could use it
with a cellular phone. Of course, the coupler can also be used as a phone for
the hard of hearing.
At any rate, I'm through with the file. Any questions, comments, praises or
flames can be answered or deleted through my e-mail address posted at
www.cybrids.org/padmaster, if it is up by the time you read this (there may
also be additional schematics there, in case you are interested). If not, I
can be occasionally found on IRC (Undernut #cybrids or #hackhelp).
Shouts out to: DemonBytez, V1rtual, NeonSurge, N-TREEG, Deathlike, Catana,
pSId, and to #cybrids and #hackhelp in general.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=----------------------=
| COCOTs - by shamr0ck |
=----------------------=
Introduction..
Today I'm going to show you some fun stuff you can do with COCOTs (Customer
Owned, Coin Operated Telephones). COCOTs are payphones owned by individuals
and private companies, and have been around for many years. The reason COCOTs
are really hitting the market is because of the money. COCOT owners get to
keep about 85% of the profits, the rest goes for taxes, and trust me thats A
LOT.
By 1991, there were more than 30,000 COCOTs in the New York State alone. Just
think of how many are in the rest of the country. Yes, it's a very big
industry. Some COCOTs out there are served by AOS (Alternate Operator
Service) companies, such as US Sprint, AT&T and MCI, but they only serve
them, they don't own them.
Most COCOTs don't have their logo on them, although I have seen them on some.
ALL COCOTs are required to provide a caller with access to the local exchange
telephone company offering service within the area in which the call
originates. Callers should be able to reach the long distance company of
their choice by dialing 10xxx for AT&t, MCI, etc.
Things to do with a COCOT
You have to know what your looking for. COCOT payphones do not have any big
name phone company logos on them. You can usually find them in big hotels,
inside and outside of restaurants, and a bunch of other places. So you have
found a COCOT. "Now what the fuck do I do with it?" The following trick is
fairly simple, but you'll be lucky if you find a COCOT that this works on.
You get on the phone and dial an 800 number and you tell them to fuck off.
Then they hang up on you (don't call a telco 800 number or some fed office,
dumbass). For about five secs you will hear a modem type sound. Yeah, thats
the 1200bps modem inside the COCOT. After you hear that you should hear a
dial tone. Now you can dial out with out paying a cent. On some COCOTs you
have to dial using a radio shack tone dialer ($25) because they disable the
keypad when there's no money in the coffer.
"So I did that but it still doesn't want to work. What do I do now?"
Well if you tried dialing out using both the keypad and the tone dialer you
are out of luck. I have seen the new COCOTs around, and they really suck. You
can't dial out because they deaden the handset. Some are smart enough to even
tell you to hang up. Never give up though, there are still a lot of old
COCOTs around.
This second trick preys upon smaller or stupider COCOT companies that
register the COCOT line as a business line rather than a payphone line. To
use this mistake to your advantage, call the operator and ask for operator
assisted dialing because one of your buttons appears to be broken, or covered
in crap or something, and tell her the number you need dialed. If the COCOT's
line is registered as a business line, she's not going to know it's a COCOT
and she'll dial the number without question. She cannot dial 900 numbers for
you though, so don't bother asking.
"Ok, I made a lot of calls using a COCOT. Who pays for it?"
The owner of the pay phone does..if you really like that COCOT you shouldn't
think you are 0-day (do not abuse the fraking cocot). If you abuse it you
will:
1. Get caught.. they do get a phone bill and they do get the numbers you
called on the bill..they are on the ESS.
2. The payphone will get taken away (make calls to france from N.Y. and talk
for 10 hours a day; I think you know what I'm getting at).
3. Your mom will catch you and slap you around a bit with a large trout..
Good luck.
-shamr0ck shamr0ck@juno.com
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=--------------------------------------=
| Basics of Telephony - by AlienPhreak |
=--------------------------------------=
Surprisingly enough most phreakers don't even know the real basics of the
telephone system. This article will outline the following features:
POTS
Trunks
The Switching System
PBXs (PABXs)
The Plain Old Telephone System (POTS):
The main part of the POTS is the actual telephone. The telephone requests
network access by using a signaling method called loop start. When the
telephone starts its session it's called "off hook" voltage, indicating the
voltage being sent from the switch or CO through the 2-wire connection
(red and green wires). Of course when you don't pick up the receiver the
phone is on hook.
When the telephone receives a call, the network (switch) gives ring voltage
out to the telephone (90 VAC over the DC voltage). Then you get those happy
rings and you pick up the phone. For the phone to dial out you need a type of
signaling. Before Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF), there was good ol' rotary
or pulse dialing. DTMF is pretty much the standard these days on most
switching systems. Pulse Dialing is still used in some areas.
Another Signaling method is MF or Multi-Frequency. Like DTMF, MF is used on a
few types of trunks and CCITT signaling. If you know anything about the old
Blue Boxes, they used the KP, ST, R1-R2 signals, et cetera, which are
actually MF signaling.
Now the tricky part is converting speech into electrical signals. For the
switching system to change your voice into signals, it uses Transmit Loudness
Objective Rating (TLOR). For you to receive the signals the switch then sends
out Receive Loudness Objective Rating (RLOR).
Central Office (CO):
In many phreaking articles you will see the acronym CO, which of course
stands for Central Office. The CO is pretty much the center of all the local
phone networks. It connects you to the rest of the world and all the other
switches. The CO is a physical facility where all of the networking and
routing switches are physically held. The trunks are what call the other
trunks within other COs (where the trunk directs or "routes" your call
depends on where you are calling to). There is no main purpose of the CO
besides housing all of the computers, trunks, and line-cards associated with
the local network.
The Switching System:
The first major independent switching system was Step-by-Step (SxS)
switching. SxS was run by electro-mechanical switches. It is now a rather
archaic system but is still used in some places. Dial pulses would be used to
cause the switches to select switch groups until the full number was dialed.
Crossbar Switching (XB) was the next electro-mechanical switching system to
come into play. The XB system was set up much differently than SxS. It used a
matrix of connectors arranged in a grid to form its connection scheme.
ESS was the first non-mechanical switching system. It provided many more
features than the basic calling system of SxS. ESS could handle both pulse
dialing and DTMF signaling. The main ESS, which used the 1A processor, was
easily upgradable to 1ESS. The processor also controlled 4ESS, allowed it to
be easily upgraded, and ran in real time. 5ESS is almost the "industry
standard switch" of today, and is far superior to Nortel's DMS switches. The
5ESS is manufactured by AT&T and is used by almost every RBOC (Regional Bell
Operating Company). The 5ESS's are almost entirely unix based, though it is
very different from the unix systems you or I run. It has many more features
and is set up by AT&T for their routing and channeling.
Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs):
The PBX is almost like a miniature switch. It controls a small area like a
business or a school phone system. The point of a PBX system is for companies
to use as few telephone lines as necessary to get the most out of their
telecommunications budgets. If you have 100 people and 100 phones, the fact
is not all 100 people are going to be using the fones at the same exact time.
PBX systems provide switching of in-house calls, and "pool" the outside
lines.
There are many functionality's of the PBX, such as paging systems and voice
mail boxes (VMBs). There are many neat things a phreaker can do to with a
PBX. Some PBXs are set up so that someone can call in and they will get an
automatic dial tone. After that they enter a code and the user is allowed to
dial out, with the call being billed to the company that owns the PBX. Of
course this can be abused, along with the VMB.
PBX networking can be very complex. I will only cover one type of Switched
Services Network (SSN). An Electronic Tandem Network happens to be what my
private school phone system uses. It's set up in the manner that all lines
(extensions) have a three digit address. Automatic routing can take place
within the private network. This SSN is setup on a privately owned trunk so
that the company or school can set it up however they would like.
Trunk Signaling:
Due to time constraints I can only talk about one type of trunk signaling,
the Single Frequency (SF). SF signaling is used on all 4 wire analog systems.
SF is a type of 'inband' signaling scheme where all information is
transmitted in the voice band. SF uses 2600hz and 2280hz signals to transmit
data. When the trunk is in an on-hook state the 2600hz or 2280hz tone is used
to connect to the remote site. When the trunk is in an off-hook state the
2600hz or 2280hz tone is dropped. SF units can pass dial pulse address
signaling at speeds from 8 to 12 (pulses per second) PPS with 56 to 69
percent break.
*2280hz is only used in British Telecom's trunks.
This concludes my article on the basics of the telefone system. If you see
anything wrong with this article or just want to comment on it please email
me at alienphreak@linenoise.org.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=--------------------------------=
| Finding numbers - by KungFuFox |
=--------------------------------=
This article is designed to give you more information than you want to know
about getting numbers. At numerous points in the article I will mention what
types of numbers I refer to, so I won't list them now. Getting numbers is the
first step to doing naughty things with your phone, or other people's phones
for that matter, so read on if you don't already know this crap. Actually, if
you've got a voice that's convincing enough to sound adultish and you're not
too scared of operators (so what if they sound evil), you might just wanna
skip all this crap and go down to the social engineering part since all this
other crap I'm about to explain is a bitch to do.
-Scanning-
If you're like most people who think they're a phreak, you're either stupid
and already got the local telco pissed at you for scanning exchanges, or
you're smart and you already knew they'd catch you, so you haven't even tried
it out of terror. If you're not like most people, I don't give a damn read
this stuff anyway.
So you're thinking to yourself "I scan exchanges all the time and nobody ever
told me to quit it", well you either know what you're doing, you're new at
it, or lucky enough to live in an area where the operators know less about
the phone system than you do.
You all probably wanna scan some exchanges anyway, seeing as it's one of the
most basic forms of phreaking out there, besides trashing, which I might get
into later. Scanning is a boring as hell but useful way of getting all sorts
of interesting numbers for personal use, such as PBXs, switch dialups, and
ANIs, amongst many other treats. You know that you're bound to find some of
these special numbers you never knew were there if you just call a few
thousand people. You may be right. Who the hell knows? Besides the telco that
is.
This leaves you with a dilemma, because you want to scan, but you can't, or
maybe you can... it depends on how much you like talking to your friendly
neighborhood gestapo. Then there's the problem of *69 vigilantes who think
they work for the CIA and just have to call you back and say something stupid
like "Hello, you just called my number". If that wasn't a bombshell, I don't
know what is. They might as well just say "I'm an idiot who's got nothing
better to do than to call you back and be dumb". Any asshole stupid enough to
try and pull this fast one on you deserves to get punished. Snap back with
something like "Yeah, I called you, but then I figured, why the fuck would I
wanna talk to a dumbass like you." That's if you've got balls, or just a low
estrogen level if you're a girl.
If you wanna chicken out real quick just scream real load "MY SPAGETTI IS ON
FIRE!!!" and slam the phone down. Problem solved. So you're thinking "I could
just use *67, and those bitches wouldn't bother me". That'll work on most
people, but there are caller ID devices and CLASS features that seem to
magically ignore that *67 and flash your info anyway. You will almost always
be forced to endure the wrath of *69 vigilantes unless you scan through a PBX
or extender, so the best thing to do is just learn how to turn their wrath
against them. There's nothing more satisfying than turning a call from a
*69 vigilante into a prank call. They'll never expect it, and probably never
call back again.
There is a wide spectrum of telco responses to scanning. Some don't even give
a damn as I think I mentioned earlier, and some are too dumb to know what
you're doing, but some are real mean about it. If you're unlucky enough to
live in one of the mean areas of the telco universe, you're liable to
encounter some level of harassment. If they were in any way interested in 'an
eye for an eye' justice, they'd call you and hang up a few thousand times,
but they almost always feel that they need to damage you in some way to make
themselves feel mighty.
The harassment could range from phonecalls, to mail, to legal involvement,
and possibly to service termination. Fear? Yes. But don't be discouraged, as
I said a couple paragraphs ago, there are methods of getting around such
difficulties, and after bullshitting for a few pages I'm going to tell you
some of those methods.
The simplest method I can think of would be to walk on over to your asshole
neighbor's TNI and do a few tens of thousands of calls to find the damn PBX
that you've been lusting for. You better have already thought of this one or
you missed something big between now and the time you first decided that you
wanted to be a phreak. If you've got a laptop that's a plus, it'll save your
fingers from the torture of dialing. Chances are your little modem card
didn't cost you a month's salary at burger king, which means it won't have
tone and voice recognition and you'll be spending your time writing or typing
notes on everything you hear when you start that scanning software.
I know that most of you are too damn lazy and scared of the dark to get up
and go open a plastic box on the side of a house to actually do some
beiging, so I'll give you some other options. If you're in an area where
everyone is an angel and the payphones trust you when your redbox says it put
in a quarter, you can waste some of the payphone company's money and get that
exchange scanning done at the same time.
The funny thing is, if the company that owns that payphone pays any attention
to calling patterns, they're probably gonna think they've got a few hundred
dollars coming to them with all the calls you're making. Of course, payphones
can't hold that much money anyway. They might get paranoid and come check on
that phone after a while when they figure out that you're doing more calling
than should be physically possible, so watch your time.
A point of note before rushing off to get to work is that it's advisable not
to start scanning from a payphone that people besides your wonderful self
would use. The time it's going to take you to scan a full 10,000 number
exchange is a good 20 hours or so, assuming it'd take 7 seconds for you to
play your tones, dial the number, and listen to the response. I don't know
anyone who wouldn't get homicidal waiting 20 hours to use a payphone. Of
course, if you can't find a payphone in a low traffic area, you could just
scan a thousand numbers at a time or something, it's up to you.
Yeah, if you're so lazy you can't even crawl to a payphone, or if you're just
unlucky enough to live in the land of the antiphreak, you'll have to resort
to my third ever so nifty option. Problem is it's only useful for scanning
99XXs and 00XXs because of the low probability of a person answering the
phone. If you've been to radioshack lately, you've seen the big promotion
that they're putting on with the Sprint Store, handing out free calling cards
to everyone that comes in. If you're just a shut-in, I hope you appreciate
that update on the outside world.
These cards come in 5, 20, and 60 minute denominations. Most of them are 5's,
though if you're lucky you'll get a 20 or a 60. (Borrowing a whole box of
these from the counter will make your scanning a lot easier.) These cards
will prove invaluable to the lazy, lame, unlucky, and stupid phreaks out
there. Hell, maybe you're not lazy or stupid, and you just need to prank the
pentagon in a hurry. They're your answer. Not so much because they're free,
and that they're run through a PBX that may or may not grant you ANI
immunity, but because they can be combined with an another important
telecommunications resource to make them even more spiffy.
If you don't know about net2phone, find out about it. If you can't guess the
address of their web site, it's www.net2phone.com. Go get it. Sure it's gonna
cost you money if you wanna make legitimate phonecalls with it, but there's
this handy dandy trial feature that allows you to call unlimited 800 and 888
numbers so long as your call doesn't last more than 20 minutes.
Beginning to figure things out? That card you got for visiting your local
"You've got questions we can't answer" store uses an 800 PBX number, which
means you can call it with your freshly downloaded copy of net2phone. "So
what the hell good is a 5 minute phone card gonna do me when I have to call
100 numbers?" you may be asking. Well surprisingly enough, I scanned the
99XX of an exchange and the service only clicked off 5 minutes on my card.
The service only counts calls that you get a legitimate connection to, which
means all those "We're sorry, this line has been disabled due to TFP
harassment" calls don't count. If you're unlucky enough to hit an operator,
you lose a minute of calling card time automatically, so go ahead and chat.
Make that minute of lost calling card time worth your while. You might
actually learn something if the operator isn't an asshole.
In combination with many of the methods above, you may use a non-calling card
PBX to aid in your scanning if you have such a luxury. The biggest problem
with this is the telco is probably gonna notice that the PBX you're using is
making a bunch of calls to the same exchange, and telcos are stupid but they
will get suspicious about something like that. When telcos call the owners of
the PBXs and start threatening to put them in jail for attempted hacking,
those PBXs usually get new access codes, so weigh the cost to reward ratio
here.
If you ARE planning on using a PBX to scan, you might as well just go for
broke and scan a bunch of exchanges in the course of a few days (before the
telco catches on) so you can get the most use out of your access code before
it gets changed. The more new PBXs and dialups you find, the more worthwhile
the sacrifice of one PBX will be. Hell, why not call McDonalds 10 or 20 times
and order some hamster burgers with extra hair when you've finished scanning,
since that PBX access code is done-for anyway.
-Trashing-
As a bonus for reading this far into my wish I were dead this is so boring
article, I'll give you a tip on trashing which I mentioned earlier. Trashing
is yet another way to get numbers you want, but this time without the
monotony of calling hundreds or thousands of numbers. Downsides to this
method are you'll have to move your ass, you're gonna have to wade through
garbage, you don't have a gui and a mouse, and you might get caught if you're
real dumb.
First and foremost, don't expect to find numbers and codes in the trash at a
Wendy's or a strip club. You have to pick the right dumpster to find the
trash you're looking for without covering yourself in burger juice and
spoiled mayonnaise. The best place to look for telco numbers is at the telco,
dumbass. If you don't know where a central office is located, call up the
operator or the company and ask (hope they're real nice or real dumb), or
drive around and look for a building with telco vans and trucks parked
outside it. Take a good look at it, noting the best places to enter it at,
assuming it's got a chainlink fence around it that's going to be locked at
night.
Once it gets dark and late enough that you feel comfortable, get in there and
start digging. Paper is your friend. Printouts are especially friendly. If
you find phone numbers written or printed on papers that don't look customer
related, you'll wanna keep them and check 'em out later. Some telcos use
shredders on all their real good useful documents so chances are if you find
shredded papers those papers are interesting, but then again it's gonna take
you about a year to put them back together unless you know what you're doing.
If you happen upon any old lineman equipment, all the more luck for you. If
sifting through the garbage doesn't turn up anything good, a tactic you may
wish to consider in desperation would be loaning yourself a lineman's handset
from a telco van. There are probably plenty of vans parked in the lot at the
building you're trashing at, just leave a post-it saying you borrowed it so
they'll know it didn't get lost and start blaming it on the raccoons that
have also been rummaging through their dumpster.
-Social Engineering-
If you've exhausted all of these possibilities and you can't find the numbers
you're looking for, there is one last tactic you can resort to. Social
Engineering. If your voice is matured enough to sound adult-like, you've got
a chance of talking the numbers out of your local operator. Although this
method of information getting is a very useful tool, I'm not going to get
that deep into social engineering, since that'd double the size of this
article and I'm sure you all read enough crap on SE to know what to do.
Before attempting to fool an operator, it might be worth a try to just talk
to the next lineman you see. They have been known to give out numbers on
request, just because you're nice enough to talk to them. Linemen don't get
to talk to many people on the job who care about what they do, so give it a
try. If you're a female talking to a male lineman your chances of getting
information are all the better. If friendliness fails, you'll have to try the
exceptionally cunning plan 'b'.
Basically you're going to want to act like a lineman who knows enough of his
acronyms, but just doesn't remember the number to such and such, or
accidentally cleared the memory on his handset, or got amnesia, or has a
handbook with a misprint. You get the picture. Operators and linemen are on
the same side, so if you can convince them that you are who you say you are,
they're not going to hang up on you like they do the rest of the time. Just
use your head and don't be too eager to convince, or too nervous and shaky.
Nobody is gonna believe you're a lineman if your voice cracks, or if you
stutter, or you just plain sound like a girl.
The most important part of convincing an operator that you're really Joe the
minimum wage lineman is casually throwing out acronyms that the operator
doesn't use often, and hence won't know off hand. If you say telco jargon
like it's common knowledge they're much more apt to believe you're a lineman,
since only lineman know telco jargon right?
Two important numbers that you'll wanna get out of that operator you're sweet
talking in lineman speak are the FACS (Facility Administration and Control
System (pronounced fax)) and the RC-MAC (Recent Change-Machine Administration
Center) numbers, assuming either number is available in your area. The FACS
number will provide you with phone numbers if you have addresses, but even
more valuable is the RC-MAC, which will get you the same information, with
the added benefit of being able to place service orders for features such
as call forwarding to some far off country or 3-way calling. When using
RC-MAC to do a number pull on an address you should request a 'FACS on
xxxxxxxx' where xxx is the address or phone number you want to look up.
Common forms of authentication and innocent phreak detection when calling
the FACS or RC-MAC numbers are:
A) asking you for a work order number
B) asking about your office
C) asking the ingenious "what is it that you want?"
D) asking if you work for (their telco name)
When dealing with situation 'A', tell him/her that you left the work order in
your truck and it's a couple blocks away, or make up a ten digit work order
number that starts with the letter c, such as c-555-555-555-5. Of course, the
odds that the order number you gave will be in the computer aren't so great,
and that's gonna throw up a red flag in their minds, and they'll say "Hey,
that number isn't there! You ain't Joe!". Just act confused and/or surprised,
then go for the pity ploy by saying something like "Oh c'mon you gotta help
me out here, I really gotta get this done, my boss says he's gonna castrate
me if I don't shape up." Hopefully they'll give you the info that you
requested, but they may ask your boss to verify it or something.
Situation 'B' can be either guessed at or danced around. You can tell them
you're with office <city> <number>, city being a city nearby that's gonna
have enough offices that they won't be able to figure you out just from
memory, and a one or two digit number of the office you're at, hopefully not
one they're familiar with, ie: "Denver 07? *I* work in Denver 07, who the
hell are you?!". If you don't wanna risk guessing, play dumb and say "I'm not
in an office, I'm in the field at <general area>".
If they ask you 'C' they're probably just kinda slow and you'll need to
repeat what you said, such as "I-AM-TRY-ING-TO-SORT-OUT-WHICH-LINE-NUMBERS-GO
-TO-THIS-BUIL-DING-STU-PID." or "I'm a phreak and I need to get this line
number forwarded so this bastard's calls will all go to Beijing", or
something similar.
Question 'D' is a no brainer. Only trouble you'll have with this one is if
they haven't already mentioned the name of the company in advance, which
means if they ask you "what company do you work for?" you'd better know.
Alright, I've given you enough information for one file. If you wanna learn
more about this stuff there's plenty of social engineering texts out there.
Do a web search or something. Now go to sleep, I'm sure this took forever to
read.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------------------=
| Telco News - compiled & edited by KungFuFox |
=-------------------------------------------------------=
| 1: U.S. cell phone industry battles service thieves |
| 2: Coming Soon: Net Access Through Power Lines |
| 3: Using a payphone? Pay up (eek!) |
=-------------------------------------------------------=
|"This job would be great if it weren't for the fucking |
| customers." -Randal, from the motion picture "Clerks" |
=-------------------------------------------------------=
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
U.S. cell phone industry battles service thieves
October 1, 1997
By Brad Liston
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuter) - Thousands of cellular telephone users have had the
unfortunate experience of opening their monthly bills and finding hundreds
of dollars in charges for calls they did not make.
The good news for them is that such fraud is way down, according to delegates
to a conference of the U.S. wireless telephone industry Wednesday.
But the bad news is that wireless thieves are getting more sophisticated.
"The criminal customer will never go away," warned Roseanna DeMaria, vice
president for business security at AT&T Corp. Wireless Services. "He'll just
engage in some very creative R&D."
At the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association's Fraud '97
conference, industry leaders said the theft of wireless services in 1996 had
dropped to 3 percent of annual revenues.
In the early 1990s, that number was 6 percent.
There currently are about 50 million wireless customers in the United States.
Before 1995, stealing a cell phone signal was a simple as standing outside a
shopping mall in an area with heavy cellular traffic and picking up a signal
that could be reprogrammed into another phone to make it look as if its calls
were coming from a legitimate account.
New technologies are making that more difficult, said Thomas McClure, the
association's director of fraud managment.
For example, wireless service providers can now match an electronic serial
number unique to a digital wireless phone with another identification number
unique to each account in a system similar to the military's "friend and foe"
technology. If someone uses an account on an unauthorized phone, he trips a
computer that alerts the service provider.
Thanks to that technology, called radio frequency fingerprinting, cellular
thieves who could once promise service for 30 days before phone companies
caught on now can promise only about three days.
For older analog phones, the industry is becoming more adept at spotting
changes in customer patterns. "If your account suddenly shows, say, three
calls a day to Bangladesh, then a computer will recognize that, and someone
will contact you to confirm the calls," McClure said.
Law enforcement sources say the ranks of cellular thieves include the usual
suspects -- drug smugglers, organized crime figures and criminal fugitives,
among others.
"The professional criminal is clearly going after our service," McClure said.
"He wants to become the invisible man."
So where do criminals, whose expertise may lie more along the line of cutting
cocaine or breaking thumbs, find people sharp enough to steal cutting-edge
technology?
"They recruit it," Jeff Nelson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications
Industry Association, said. "We're up against some of the best minds in the
nation."
(C) Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
[Best minds in the nation, that's kinda nice of them. Too bad all those evil
criminals and phreaks get mixed up by the media so often. Why can't they ever
mix up people like Spamford and pornographers? That'd make one hell of a
story in the tabloids. "Spamford's cyber-sexring may be cybersending email to
your cyberkids in cyberspace."]
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
Coming Soon: Net Access Through Power Lines
October 8, 1997
--Reuters
Canada's Northern Telecom (Nortel) and Britain's Norweb Communications today
unveiled new technology allowing reliable, low-cost, high-speed access to the
Internet through the domestic electricity supply.
In a move heralding the first competition between electricity companies and
telecommunications carriers, the two groups said their patented technology
would allow power firms to convert their infrastructures into information
access networks.
Having reduced electrical interference on power lines, the companies said
they could shunt data -- and possibly voice -- over power lines into the home
at up to 1MB per second.
This is up to ten times faster than ISDN, the fastest currently available
speed for domestic computer users. Although it is slower than rival ADSL
technology being developed by British Telecommunications, which upgrades
copper wires, Norweb and Nortel's technology is much cheaper for operators to
install.
All consumers need is the equipment developed by Nortel and Norweb -- an
extra card for personal computers, some software to handle subscription,
security, and authentication services, and a small box that is installed next
to the electricity meter.
This will send and receive data and is in turn linked to a personal computer
through an ordinary coaxial cable. Peter Dudley, vice president of Nortel,
said the groups had an "absolutely spectacular" amount of interest from
electricity companies in Britain and abroad that are keen to offer the
service to consumers.
"The race is on to be first," he told Reuters. Prices will be set by
electricity companies that offer the service. But consumers currently spend
an average of 20 to 30 pounds ($48.60) per month for Internet access -- and
the new service offers permanent access without telephone costs.
"Assuming they continue to spend at that rate, it is not unreasonable to
assume that is the kind of tariffing that may be submitted," Dudley said.
The Canadian telecoms equipment maker, and Norweb, part of England's
multiutility United Utilities, said their technology was fast enough for most
future domestic or small office applications and was cost effective enough to
allow operators returns on investments. "As one of the first practical, low
cost answers to the problem of high speed access to the Internet, this
technology will unleash the next wave of growth," Dudley said.
The two companies have developed a "specialized signaling scheme" that allows
them to carry data traffic between local power substations and homes,
effectively turning the electricity supply into a communications network.
Each substation is then linked by fiber-optic circuits to a central switch --
and from there into the worldwide computer network.
After 18 months of refining and upgrading a prototype and promising "oodles
of bandwidth," the companies said they planned to market the technology in
Europe and the Asia Pacific region. "We are ready to ship in volume," said
Ian Vance, vice president and chief scientist at Nortel Europe.
Banking on high growth and good economic returns, Norweb hopes to attract
around 200 customers in a marketing pilot in northwestern England in the
second quarter of 1998 before rolling out the service."
[Keep in mind that assuming this technology does become popular, there are
going to be plenty of security holes early on, seeing as these power
companies are going to be much more interested in seizing a share of the
market than making their telecommunications networks air tight. Maybe since
the power companies won't have to do serious upgrades to their network to
make it competative with fiber optic lines they can get us cheaper rates.
That'd be swell wouldn't it.]
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
Using a pay phone? Pay up
By Maria M. Perotin of the Orlando Sentinel staff
A quarter won't buy a call from a pay phone much longer. Come Tuesday
(Oct 7), a change in federal regulations will allow phone companies to
charge whatever they choose for a local call from a pay phone.
That means 25-cent calls no longer will be standard in Florida. In fact,
callers could find that prices vary on phones just a few yards apart if
different companies own them.
Several of the state's largest telephone companies said this week they are
considering price increases. At least one in Central Florida intends to raise
its charge to 35 cents immediately. The new rules stem from an overhaul of
the telephone industry -- called for by the federal Telecommunications Act of
1996. It means an end to the state's right to regulate prices at pay phones.
Bob Spangler, acting chief of the Federal Communications Commission's
enforcement division, said the agency expects competition among companies to
keep costs of calls fair. "If one tries to jack it up to 50 or 75 cents,
there are going to be other pay phones," Spangler said. "It's like the price
of gas."
A handful of states have stopped regulating pay-phone prices before Tuesday's
deadline. The result? Spangler said the cost of calls has jumped almost
everywhere -- generally to 35 cents, although they now cost as much as 50
cents in some areas of the country.
Sprint, which owns 12,000 pay phones in FLorida, plans to begin raising
prices next week to 35 cents and to complete the conversion on all its phones
by Jan. 1, company spokesman Brian Craven said Friday. "We're just joining,
I'm sure, many others doing that," Craven said. "Twenty-five cents is not a
realistic price for a local phone call anymore."
For 16-year-old Gene Ainsworth, the increase of a 15-minute call to 35 cents
means more than a dime. The DeBary teenager has no home phone, so he relies
on a nearby Sprint pay phone to keep in touch with friends. "Every day when I
get off school, I come here and use this phone," Ainsworth Said. "I call my
girlfriend." The extra 10 cents per call could get expensive, he said.
In addition to eliminating state control over pay-phone prices, the FCC is
making other changes that should reach phone users' pockets. Some highlights:
* Companies that own pay phones can begin charging 411 information calls.
These previously were free in Florida.
* Long-distance carriers and other companies with toll-free numbers will have
to compensate companies for calls made from their pay phones. To deal with
that, Spangler said, some companies are increasing their rates or imposing
surcharges.
So what won't change? Emergency calls to 911, and relay services for the deaf
will remain free.
The FCC has reserved the right to step in if customers complain they are
being gouged, especially at airports or other locations where there usually
is no competition among phone companies. "We recognize that in some locations
this may not work," Spangler said.
Around Central Florida, all pay-phone users aren't likely to see the cost
increase soon. Bellsouth -- Florida's largest pay-phone owner with 40,000
phones -- hasn't decided yet whether it will change prices. And People's
Telephone Co., an independent pay-phone company with about 8,500 phones
throughout Florida, expects to raise its price but hasn't decided on a new
rate or rates. "People's is looking to have a fair price for local coin
calls," general counsel Bruce Renard said. "We may well have different rates
in different locations. We're going to be looking to see what the marketplace
does."
The state Public Service Commission, which previously oversaw pay-phone
rates, is warning consumers to pay attention to prices before dropping money
in the phone slot. "When you walk up to a pay phone, look at it," spokeswoman
Melinda Pace said. "I know it's not always a convenience to shop around."
Monica Bell, 35, of Orlando said she would be reluctant to use public
telephones if rates go up. "It's hard enough paying a quarter," Bell said
after using a pay phone Friday in downtown Orlando. "I don't think it's fair.
People are going to stop using them."
Inez Smith of Orange City said she won't complain as long as the pay-phone
tolls don't rise beyond 35 cents. She only uses public phones to call a cab
when she wants to return home after an appointment or an afternoon of
shopping. "If they went up to 50 cents, that would make a difference," Smith
said.
Pedro Ruz Gutierrez of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
[Ever more reason to exploit the weaknesses these payphones still have.
Saying 25 cents isn't enough to charge for a local call is just plain
bullshit. I guess it's their funeral anyway.]
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=---------------------------------------------------------=
| TFP's Party in the Mailroom - TFP and you reader people |
=---------------------------------------------------------=
Due to insurmountable difficulties in producing a section on email feedback,
being that this is the first issue, we decided to just fabricate all the
feedback ourselves. You people are too good to us! (BTW, if you think these
faked emails are all real stupid you could help out next issue's feedback
section by bitching at us about 'em.)
As a footnote to the mailroom introduction, the TFP people would like to
introduce you to some other TFP people, the mail editors. Joe Nerdy Monkey
and Dumb Blonde Chick. They'll be editing a few, if not all of the emails
that we think are interesting enough to publish.
From: "Tatiana Gau" <tgau@aol.com>
Organization: AOL
To: tfp@geocities.com
Date: Sat, 32 Oct 1997 00:10:39 -7000
Subject: Hello.
To whoever this may concern, I would like to express my deep displeasure in
the name of AOL for your production of this electronic magazine called TFP. I
know it has absolutely nothing to do with hacking, and especially nothing to
do with AOL, but nonetheless I will be forced to pursue legal action against
you in an effort to protect our customers from harm should you not take this
warning seriously and discontinue your publication. If you're wondering why
I knew ahead of time that you were going to publish TFP, it's because that
third eye in the center of my forhead is a psychic link to the future. See
you in court!
X's and O's,
Tatiana Gau
AOL Vice President of Integrity Assurance <-long enough for you? phear me!
[JNM: Wow. Gotta feel special when somebody that important to the lamers says
hi. I wonder if she eats bananas. Equally worth noting is her blatant
disregard for proper spelling when she wrote 'phear me'. Was that part of the
overall threat? I wonder if that third eye had something to do with this
email being written on a date that doesn't exist. I better call my
psychiatrist.]
[DBC: You're like, totally hairy!]
[JNM: How stunningly inciteful.]
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
From: "LLCoOLhAk" <llcoolhak@webtv.com>
Organization: WebTV
To: tfp@geocities.com
Date: Sat, 32 Oct 1997 00:10:39 -7000
Subject: F@(* you!
YOUR ZINE SUX. Bitchez r gonna get hakd by da LL krew! C-U in |-|311 bitchez!
\\ \\ |-- 000 oOo ll ! ! ++ ( /
\\ \\== | 0 0 O O ll !!!! +__+ (K
\\=== |-- 000 oOo llll ! ! + + ( \
"J00 R G0iN D0w|\|!"
<llcoolhak@ufiguritout.com>
[JNM: Damn I could really go for some bananas. Oh, about that email, I'm not
one for psychoanalysis, but judging from the ISP I'm gonna guess this guy
isn't 'hakin' us with that webtv remote.]
[DBC: Didn't he totally hate us?!]
[JNM: That he did. Seems like the bad reviews are outweighing the good. I
noticed he attempted to elude a response through the manipulation of his
email address at the bottom of the letter. I hope he doesn't get subscribed
to any mailing lists, that'd be a shame.]
[DBC: Totally!]
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
From: "KungFuFox" <mazer@cycat.com>
Organization: TFP
To: tfp@geocities.com
Date: Sat, 32 Oct 1997 00:10:39 -7000
Subject: Hey guys, change of plans...
That site with mail bomb
ing, web page hacking, a warez archive, and porno
collection that I'd planned to have ready by late November is gonna have to
be postponed. Looks like we're looking at a late winter/early spring opening
date now. Sorry about the delay.
[JNM: That seems rather fabricated to me, and I don't know why.]
[DBC: Yeah really!]
[JNM: I find it odd that all three of these emails were written on the same
date at the exact same time. It's as if they're all forgeries or something.]
[DBC: Totally!]
[JNM: You're stupid.]
[DBC: Shut up! My name is DUMB Blonde Chick, not STUPID Blonde Chick. I'm not
stupid. You're a dumb nerdy monkey.]
[JNM: I stand corrected.]
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------------------------=
| [LoL] Land-o-Logs [LoL] |
| Phonecalls and IRC logs courtesy of readers like you! |
=-------------------------------------------------------=
Operators don't know shit
Submitted by Mars, God of War
(mars@frontiernet.net)
Is it just me, or do operators not know shit?
I live in Rochester, New York. We have NyNex phones here. So many times
I've harrassed operators, telling them that our "band of evil phreakers" are
out there, and they ask me if need 411.
Here's a transcript of shit that I've encountered:
(This was after I couldn't get my red box to work, of course it was a
cassette one)
Me: Hello, are there any Red Box accessible phones around here?
Op: Red Box accessible?
Me: Yup
Op: What's a red box?
Me: Red Boxes are little boxes us phreaks use to get free calls.
Op: I'm sorry, I don't know, let me transfere you to my superviser.
Sup: Hello, what was your problem?
Me: Hi, are there any Red Box accessible phones around here?
Sup: Ummm, I don't handle special phones, hold while I transfere you.
Some Higherup Guy: Hi, what kind of phones are you looking for?
Me: REDBOX ACCESSABLE PHONES, I NEED ONE TO MAKE A IMPORTANT CALL.
Some Higherup Guy: RedBox accessable phones, are they special phones?
Me: No, it's a regular payphone. I was trying to redbox on this one to get a
free call and it didn't work, so I want to know where a redbox accessible
payphone is.
Some Higherup Guy: Hmmmmm, Normal payphones let you 'red box', but this one
won't? (He doesn't know what the fuck a red box is)
(At this time, I played my redbox recording 4 times, it was shitty)
Some Higherup Guy: O.K. You just put in 4 quarters, what number do you want
called.
Me: 247-xxxx (My friend's)
Some Higherup Guy: Thank-you and sorry for your inconvenence. You can get
all your questions answered if you call our help line at 1-800-[I forgot the
number]
=-----------------------------------------------------------=
[I got this call between dials while I was beiging at a local college dorm.
Needless to say I was surprised at getting a call, but I think I handled it
well. Everything I didn't remember well I guessed on or made up. -anonymous]
Me: Thank you for calling radiocrap. You've got questions we've got answers.
Lady: Heh...hello? Is this the University of Florida? I'm calling for Jason
Caldwell.
Me: No lady this is Bob, holdon I'll get him.
Lady: Oh, alright. Thank you.
Me: Who may I say is calling?
Lady: Grace Caldwell, his mother.
Me: Ok just a sec...
Me: <pinch my nose> Hello? Mom?
Lady: Jason? Are you ill?
Me: Uh yeah, but I got beat up too though.
Lady: Oh dear... are you alright?
Me: Yeah I guess I'll be ok they only gave me a few bruises. A couple guys
knocked me down in the campus parking lot and took my wallet.
Lady: Oh that's just horrible Jason, are you sure you're alright? Did you
call the police?
Me: No mom I'm fine, I don't need to call the police I'll just report my
stolen credit cards to the card companies. I need some money though. I'm out
of food. Do you have any credit cards with you?
Lady: Of course I do dear, how much money do you need? Would $100 be alright?
Me: Yeah, if you could just give me one of your credit card numbers that'd be
great.
Lady: Oh, alright. Hold on dear I'll go get my purse...<puts reciever down>
...are you still there Jason?
Me: Yeah, you got the number?
Lady: Yes dear, it's a mastercard, the number on the card is <the number>.
Will you be alright?
Me: Yeah mom I'll be fine. What's the expiration date on the card?
Lady: Oh, hmm.. it says 7 dash 99.
Me: Ok mom, thanks for the loan, I'll talk to you later I need to go get some
food now. Bye. <click>
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=-------------------------------------=
| Storytime with TFP |
| By whoever bothered to submit (KFF) |
=-------------------------------------=
Mexican COCOTs
--------------
On a cross country road trip I took this summer one of the stops we made just
for the sake of doing it was going to Mexico. We crossed the border at El
Paso, and since it was around rush hour when we got there both sides of the
border were bumper to bumper traffic. Mexicans going to Mexico, Mexicans
going to America. There sure was a lot more security going into America than
into Mexico.
Anyway, we didn't even get out of the van we were in, we crossed this border
bridge over the Rio Grande and made a U-turn and came right back. I swear as
soon as we crossed into Mexico a fly flew into the van. We'd driven like
two thousand miles and hadn't seen a single fly and as soon as we hit Mexico,
boom. Fly city. Anyway, we crossed back over the bridge, got the van searched
for refugees, plant life, and drugs, and were sent on our way. A few more
flies joined us at that point.
I decided to make a call back to the folks so I stopped at a payphone, got
out my AT&T calling card crap, and went to the phone. I don't remember if it
was a COCOT or not, though I'm assuming it was, because when I dialed the
AT&T carrier access code (10288), I was sent to this stupid operator who
asked me what I was dialing. I told her I wanted to get AT&T so I could use
my calling card. I guess she didn't know what AT&T was, because she said that
I could give her the calling card and she'd put my call through, so I did.
She then asked for the number I was calling, and she completed the call.
When it started to dial and ring, this recorded voice came on and began
repeating over and over again (after the operator had left the line),
"operator, this line is a non-billable account". The recording was so bad it
sounded almost like somebody was using a voice changer on it. It kept
repeating that damned message for about 20 seconds even after the call had
connected. It made me wonder. Did Mexicans attempt to scam the operator so
often that the COCOT company had to put that recording on the line to protect
its revenue?
Equally interesting to me was that the stupid recording didn't even come on
when the operator picked up, but afterward. I came to the conclusion that it
was only designed to come on when you dialed '0', not when you dialed a
carrier access code. After the COCOT user had not dialed a full 7 (Nxx-xxxx)
or 11 (1-Nxx-Nxx-xxxx) digits after a given timeout period, the phone
probably defaulted to playing the recorded message, assuming the person who
had dialed less than a 7 digit number was going to get an operator anyway.
That made me wonder if the COCOT company was really so dumb that they'd
only protect themselves from fraud when you dialed '0', and not when you
misdialed, or dialed a carrier access code. Could you override this crude
attempt to foil fraudulent operator assisted dialing? What if you dialed a
carrier access code and pulled the standard scam of "Sorry to bother you
ma'am/sir, but my X key is (broken, covered in feces, on fire, etc), could
you dial a number for me?"?
Assuming the COCOT was owned by a small company who only registered the COCOT
line as a business line, that dumb operator would probably put your call
through without question. Sure would be a swell and stupid way to spite that
COCOT company. Shame on them for trying so gosh darn hard to stop the Mexican
phreaks from calling their straw huts back home to give the good news that
they'd crossed the border.
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
Well readers, that's it for issue 1. Go ahead, try and read something else.
You'll be back! Expect issue 2 to be released sometime after issue 1. We'd
feel real swell if you'd email us at tfp@geocities.com with your comments on
what sucked in this issue that you never wanna see again. Oh, and in the
spirit of Halloween, go scare the crap outta some people. Nail a copy of TFP
to every tree in your neighborhood while you're at it. Bye!
=----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
