Phreaking

A slang term, phreaking is made up of two words; phone and freak. Phreaking generally entails learning about or exploiting systems which have to do with the phone system, but also encompasses voice-over-ip (VoIP).

History

Phreaking, in the sense of exploiting the phone system, started in the mid 50's, because of AT&T's recent addition of direct-dial long-distance ability. During this time, some people began experimenting with the phone system, in other words hacking the phone system. (p.s. someone add moar, I'm lazy)

Basically it's like this: everything in the old school landline phone system runs off of tones like the ones created by using the keypad. Some college students did a thesis paper on how it all worked, the specific Hz included, and some protohackers found it. An early Phreak, known as Captain Crunch discovered that a free whistle he got in his cereal (guess which one) would allow him to reset trunks. On an odd note, Joybubbles (mentioned below) learned how to do a bunch of this stuff, and passed it on to kids at his blind kids camp. So alot of the early phreaks that really got into this shit were blind, because what the fuck else are you gonna do, amirite? And here's the kicker: They can't stop this shit, ever. To change the tones, or what they do would entail replacing every phone in the entire world. Extremely detailed instructions, and stories about this cromagnon Anonymous can be found in the Jolly Roger Cookbook if anyone can dig it up. The colored boxes give one an ungodly amount of power over the phone system when used correctly. Just don't do it from your fucking house, the shit is federal. One of the old phreaks ended up making a shitload of the blue boxes small enough to fit in a cig pack for the mob. Ma Bell was not amused. Video that explains it quite nicely, it is quite lengthy, but nonetheless good: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5464925144369700635

Information Gathering

Looks like some anons have been gathering intel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TouchToneTerrorists

Joybubbles

Josef Carl Engressia, aka Joybubbles, was a blind genius, who was sexually abused by a nun as a child. Being gifted with perfect pitch, he discovered that by whistling a tone of 2600 Hz, he could reset trunks, allowing him various possibilities to route phone calls through the system.

Boxes

Though many do not work now, because of changes to a digital system from analog, there are a few that do--these are mostly here for completion.

Red Box

Basically, in the early days (and some places today), the insertion of a coin would cause a specific tone to be output. People found that by recording these and playing them back, they could get free phone calls. There is a lot more to it, but the editors are lazy.

Blue Box

This was a box that gave the normal person the ability to act as an operator, again, because of certain tones.

Beige Box

This 'box' is built at least once by everyone and their grandmother. All it is, is two alligator clips spliced with the line from a phone cord.

DiTTo Box

This is a phone with an added mic mute switch that can output audio to an external source such as a stereo or tape recorder, a sort of phreaker's wiretap. DoctoR DiTTo's original tutorial can be found here.