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Tolmes News Service 04
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# <Tolmes News Service> #
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# > Written by Dr. Hugo P. Tolmes < #
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Issue Number: 04
Release Date: November 19, 1987
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TITLE: Cellular Technology
FROM: US News & World Report
DATE: May 18, 1987
The booming business in cellular phones has been a gift to eavedroppers too.
About 700,000 of these new mobile telephones, high in quality and low in
cost compared with the old-fashioned car phones, are already in use. But few
users are aware that the first leg of the conversation-- from the car to the
base stations that connect to the telephone network -- is carried on an
ultrahigh-frequency radio channel that many radio scanners can tune in.
According to Tandy corporation, which sells cellular phones, some 5 million
scanners are already in the hands of the public, and most can be modified
to recieve the cellular frequencies. Tandy's own Radio Shack stores sell a
$399.95 scanner already equipped to pick up cellular channels. A law
passed by Congress last fall makes it a misdemeanor to listen in on phone calls
carried over microwaves or on cellular channels- but obviously
such laws are almost unenforceable. The increased use of computers in
business also has enhanced the possibilitiy of sophisticated snooping.
Banks and other financial institutions authorize transfers of funds
electronically, by transmitting computer-to computer messages over the
phone lines. In one case, a technician in New York attached a tap recorder to
an automatic teller machine he had been told to repair. As customers
punched in their account numbers and indentification and directed their
transactions, sending the data flowing to the bank's main computer, the
recorder obediently taped all. The technician emptied several accounts
before he was caught.
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NOTA:
Just another article on the use of scanners to pick up cellular signals.
The part at the end about the ATM repairman could possibly refer to Mr.
Post (The Magician.) See TNS Issue #2 for more details.
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TITLE: Pirate BBS
FROM: A+ Magazine
DATE: November 1986
While several software publishers are removing copy protection, allowing users
to copy application programs to their hard disks and keep an archival copy for
backups, the Software Publishers Association is taking direct action to combat
software theft. Through a private investigator, the group recently located and
closed down a pirate bulletin-board system (BBS) called the Star Chamber, d made
available more than 40 megabytes of Atari
software, including a disassembled version of the Macintosh ROMs that allowed
some Mac software to run on a modified Atari ST.
BBSs and commercial information-retrieval systems such as GEnie,
Delphi, CompuServe, and The Source provide an increasingly useful means for
distributing information and ideas. The commercial services usually police
their own systems. "The days are over when someone can illegally transmit
copyrighted software via BBS systems", said Mark Skapinker of Batteries
Included, one of the 12 publishers involved in the Star Chamber raid. The SPA
will continue to monitor BBS systems and pursue individual piracy cases.
"We're all fed up with tolerating theft of our products, and we intend to go
after these scofflaws aggresively", added Gordon Monnier of Michtron, another
publisher involved in the closing of the BBS.
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NOTA:
It should be noted that the Star Chamber was back up soon after the
BBS was raided. It just had more security. The Star Chamber may even
be up still.
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TITLE: Scanning Bust
FROM: The STC Telecomputing Network
DATE: 1987
CHINA, Me. (NB) -- A 16-year-old computerist used his machine to
dial every telephone number in his small town early one morning.
And now he's doing time by doing computer work at the Kennebec
County Sheriff's office. The boy will spend about 60 hours
entering some 2,000 items of data that have backed up in the
office. The sheriff said the youth programmed his computer to
dial every number in the town of China. Then he fell asleep. When
he awoke, he discovered that the computer had made 801 phone
calls. When the sheriff got some irate calls from China citizens,
he knew who to look for, because the youngster earlier used his
computer and modem to make calls all over the country, leading to
a $5,000 telephone bill for his mother.
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NOTA:
The kid was scanning for computers in his prefix. He shouldn't have been
scanning because he was busted for computer crimes earlier. Stupid kid. Of cours
e this wouldn't have happened if
he lived in a bigger town.
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TITLE: Rip Offs
FROM: Time (Business Notes)
DATE: May 25, 1987
Reach out and Rob Someone-"Pssst! Wanna buy a cheap long-distance phone
call?" Words to that effect are now being whispered in the vicinity of
telephone booths across the country as part of a scam that costs US phone
companies anywhere from $6.5 million to $11 million a year. Hustlers who might
once have peddled drugs or sex offer prospective customers cut-rate
telephone calls that are placed by using access codes stolen from
long-distance phone companies. The most likely buyers: people waiting in urban
bus and train terminals, especially immigrants who mightved one in a foreign la
nd without having to fork over a fistful of
quarters. At New York City's Port Authority Bus Terminal, the going
illegal rate is $2 to call anywhere in the US and $4 for an overseas hookup.
Authorities have rounded up hundreds of phone hustlers around the
country in recent months. In New York alone, last year 190 people
were arrested for participating in the hot line scam. Three local telephone
companies and 20 long-distance carriers, including AT&T, US Sprint and
MCI, joined forces to form a group called the Communications Fraud
Control Association, which now includes a number of other phone companies. The
associations mission: to help crack down on the growing practice by urging
tougher laws and stricter law enforcement.
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NOTA:
This article gives the details on the forming of the CFCA (Communications
Fraud Control Association). This association was formed from MANY LDC's
(Long-Distance Companies). The alternate carriers are joining forces
in an effort to stop phone fraud. Luckily, they are hitting hard on these
"code hustlers" and that should bring some attention away from phreaks. These
"code hustlers" have been found in most airports and bus terminals. Many times
they are just homeless people who manually scan for working codes. Other
times they are people who use their computers to hack them and then just
make money by going around to airports an selling them.
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TITLE: How the Soviets are Bugging America
FROM: Popular Mechanics
DATE: April 1987
Soviet agents may be listening to your personal telephone conversations.
If you're involved in the defense industry or in sensitive scientific
activity, there is a good chance they are.
In fact, a recent unclassified Senate Intelligence Committee report on
counterintelligence indicates that more than half of all telephone calls in the
United States made over any distance are vulnerable to interception. Every
American should know this. In the ultimate phone tap, you place a
call and the signal goes to a phone company microwave transmitter, which
beams the call to a reciever. Some of the return signal "spills" allowing
Soviets to pick it up. Signal is transmitted to a Russain satellite ,
which sends it to Cuba. Map shows Russian spy stations.
When you place a long-distance
telephone call from point A to point B,
there are three communications paths or
circuits, over which your call might
travel:microwave, satellite, or cable.
Cable is the most secure. However,
it is the least practical and
economical method.
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NOTA:
This article actually went on for about four pages. Most of the article is
Reaganish propaganda with anti-soviet themes. The part that was placed above
is about the technical aspects of intercepting communications. When the
transmissions are the Soviets can pick up the signals.
Anyone could really pick up the signals. I hope that the small part that
I printed above will be of some technical value.
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TITLE: Deadly Bugs
FROM: The Chicago Tribune (Sunday Magazine)
DATE: May 3, 1987
In 1971 a sophisticated scam was uncovered in South Korea involving a US
Army supply computer. Through insider access, a group of South Korean
blackmarketeers and US personnel had a lucrative racket going. By using the
computer they were able to siphon off as much as $18 million dollars worth of
US military supplies a year, and even resold the stolen items- somtimes back
to the US Army- they manipulated computer files to conceal traces of the
fraud. When this classic case of computer crime by insiders finally came
to light, the moral seemed to be clear: software-the detailed instructions that
tells a computer how to function and what operations to perform- is the
ultimate medium for anyone wo for whatever purpose, seeks to engage in
deception. Yet from that time to the present a sometimes-touching trust in
computer software has become a hallmark of ever more of our nations's business
and defense establishments, from banks transferring funds electronicaly to
Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI].
In recent years Americans often have been entertained by stories of
youthful "hackers" breaking into corporate or government computers and
toying with the data or programs contained there. Amusement has
sometimes turned into alarm, as it did in 1983 when some young people in
Wisconsin penetrated part o a computer at the US government research center in
LOS ALAMOS, NM. Or when, in July of 1985, New Jersey teenagers were found
to have developed the capability through their home computers to alter
orbits of commercial communications satellites.
The forerunner of some members of this new generations may be "Captain
Midnight", one of the first high-tech saboteurs to carryout an operation with
dramatic nationwide impact. On April 27, 1986, Captain Midnight, as he
called himself, interfered with a satellite transmission to Home Box
Office viewers in the US, interrupting a movie to run his own message- and
production widespread consternation in civilian and military circles. With
some irony, the movie that Captain Midnight chose to interrupt was "the
Falcon and the Snowman", which was based on one of the great US spy
scandals of the 1970s.
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NOTA:
What you have just read is only a part of the article. Most of the article
centered on new SDI technology and government computer system. I selected
the first few paragraphs and the second to last one about Captain Midnight.
The article was about 6 pages long and had the following pictures:
- a man sitting at a computer terminal with what appears to be an explosive
device beneath the terminal
-what appears to be a scorpion shaped like a computer
Both of these pictuthe reader that hacking can cause
deadly damage and that it should be wiped out. The first illustration wants
to get over the idea that working at a computer can be deadly because of the
software. The second illustration (that was actually on the cover of the Sunday
Magazine) represents more danger ("Deadly Bugs") in computers.
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TITLE: The Newest Dating Game
FROM: U.S. News & World Report
DATE: June 8, 1987
"Hello? Any ladies out there?" asks 17-year-old Dan from Detroit. Over a
crackling, echo-filled telephone line comes the voice of 14-year-old
Michelle:"What color hair do you have?" Dan responds:"Br own, I have brown
hair." About a minute later, Dan pops the question: "Do you want to call me?
Here's my number....."
Welcome to the weird world of hightech courtship. Dan and Michelle, like
thousands of other teenagers and young adults, have dialed into the "party
phone" lines that are now popping up across the country. For a toll ranging
from 50 cents to $1 a minute, callers can talk to complete strangers, evaluate
what they hear, then agree to continue talking through private telephone
lines--or even to meet in person.
The new services are enormously popular. Ultraphone of Seattle started
party-phone lines in Omaha last year and now operates in more than 30 cities.
Spitech, in Marlton, N.J., launched its service in Philadelphi a last year. It
now operates in Pittsburge and Cincinnati, and is considering five other
cities. "People are lonely and need somebody to talk to," says Ultraphone
President Betsy Superfon. "With social diseases and rejection rampant, party
phones are an alternative to the bars."
KEEPING CONVERSATIONS CLEAN
Along with the popularity has become controversy. Mountain Bell's
part-phone service for teenagers and adults had "significant problems" from the
start, says spokesman John Gonzales.
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NOTA:
