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Friday, February 11, 2011

Exploration or Exploitation?


Does anyone here hack? I mean it in the literal sense, do you find yourself hacking websites, phones, or other communication technology? I find the whole idea of hacking, and phreaking (phone line hacking) very stimulating. I mean to me the term hacker and hacking refers to the ability to use the inner workings of programs and technology to create hidden door ways and paths around the rigid rules of programming. Specifically today though I want to get into the world of phreaking. I don't hear this term used much anymore.. actually I never really heard it used. I'm 23, so the days of phreaking were generally dying as I was being born. Anyway brief history lesson in telecommunication hacking:

In the mid 70's AT&T ruled the telecommunications world. They were the one and only top dogs, and could charge exuberant prices that no one could contest. Obviously people didn't find this price gorging to be fair. Well neither did the US government. AT&T was eventually broken up in the early 80's into small subsidiary companies called the Bell companies.. Bell Alantic..Bell South etc.. Anyway it was too late people, mainly hackers, began experimenting with ways around the phone companies, stiff charges. Free phones calls, and information were but a few tricks away! People soon got creative outside pay phones became victims of what has been deemed "Boxing" Were you can literally trick the phone into believing you inserted money by recording the sound previously.
One of the great methods you can try out if you have an older land line near you is to pick up the handset, and click the receiver down a few times per second. then stop for a second, then click a few more times then again, take a second pause.. Do this 7 times, and you've just dialed a number! You can get good at this, because how many times you click the receiver, the phone translates that number of clicks into a 1-9 number. So you can literally tap out a phone number if you know the proper number. Morris code for the phone!

There's a bunch of other phone hacks that you can research and look into, I suppose with the dying of payphones, these hacks really just aren't viable anymore, but I love the idea..
Some people say, why go through all that trouble just to save a few cents? To me, and I honestly can't speak for everyone else, its really about the fun, and interest in seeing how things work and play out. Phone lines, computers and cable lines have always fascinated me, so being able to play and tinker with this stuff is really my version of playing video games. Pure fun. In fact.. I've been thinking..would the boxing trick work on parking meters? I plan to find out later this week! I'll report back to you my news! Anyway, keep exploring guys.


PS: The photo is just a reminder of what pay phone's have become in the last 10 years...

29 comments:

  1. wow, i love your blog, i only do life hacks myself. Ez open sodas, free internet, and the like.

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  2. Hey, the hacker mind set transcribes how and what you hack. Hacking is still hacking. I don't hack computers (yet, I'm still learning) but I carry the hacker mentality through life...

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  3. Very solid blog man i love it will keep checking

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  4. i wish i knew how to hack :S following for future info :P

    http://youarenowinterested.blogspot.com/

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  5. Not much of a hacker here but I find the concept quite enticing.

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  6. Yes phreaking is essentially dead.

    I TOTALLY agree with you though, about the fun and investigating how things work.. I've been a tinkerer all my life.. legos will do that to you when you're like five. I love taking things apart and trying to put htem back together, meanwhile research what each "part" is or does.. Good times.

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  7. I got in to "hacking" ages ago after my own computer got hacked, whoever did it totally screwed my PC up so badly, the only way I could regain control was to physically pull the phone line from the jack (yes that long ago)

    I remember sitting back looking at my now totally f*cked up screen and thinking to myself "I have to know how he did that"

    It took a hell of a long time to gain the basic fundamentals of how a hack actually worked and what to look for and how to use the exploitable areas to ones own advantage.

    As for phone hacking otherwise known as phreaking. Its an almost totally dead art, but I do remember back in the day where Boxing was the norm for hackers. I used and loved the good old red box. Long since has bell and others corrected many of these problems that plagued

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  8. Wow thanks for the post, can't hack for shit but I wish I could....it's good to have at least some fundamental knowledge since one doesn't know when it'll come handy

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  9. Interesting post. I'm a little conflicted about hacking. On one hand it can be a useful and fairly harmless tool. On the other I find some hackers (not all) sometimes come up with morally dubious reasons to excuse hacking that is illegal or has a negative impact on people. It's an interesting topic, keep on bloggin'! :3

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  10. The internet is a fun playground, for those who know how to navigate it. As long as you have some ethics, hacking is fun.

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  11. Some people see hacking as a bad thing (mostly because of how the media portrays it).

    If anyone has seen "The Social Network", Mark got caught hacking, he asked that he wanted some credit to what he found (gaping security holes). The school board didn't understand why.

    If I remember correctly, this is a form of grey hat hacking (do a search on wikipedia).

    IMHO, hacking is a form of showing your intellectuality. I crave for this knowledge (I really don't know where to start)

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  12. The last thing I hacked was a neopets account 10 years ago.

    I felt like such a boss.

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  13. does modding the shit out of GTA Vice City counts as modding? If so....

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  14. cool tip! i gonna try this tomorrow with an old telephone and i will see whats happening (i hope i dont call the police...)

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  15. used to be interested in the history of phreaking, very interesting stuff by very intelligent people.

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  16. woah cool. didnt know about the whole morse code thing for landlines. pretty interesting

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  17. Sounds like you are talking about Kevin Mitnig.

    Well yes I do hack , in real life I try to manupu. people to get what I want . But if you are asking about computers ... ehh , I suck at computers .

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  18. It may have come off that way, that I'm just talking about phones and computers, but Social Engineering, or Human Hacking, is just as valuable..

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  19. That's an interesting viewpoint.

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  20. nice pic, I'd like a fish tank like that, as for the post, I agree very interesting

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  21. last thing i hacked was ma friends psn account and bought a avatar with the money that he had in his account... it felt pretty good on the inside

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  22. Up until now I've never even heard of phreaking. You've opened up my eyes. I'm following you man. Return the favor? Thanks

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  23. i wish i could hack :( nice blog, i am now following.

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  24. i wish i could hack too, you need to study a lot to be succesfull

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  25. Those phone hacks won't work anymore...

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  26. I've always been fascinated with computer security and network security but there is a lot of stuff to learn...

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  27. I've attempted to hack websites before, lost interest. Too technical for me.

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  28. I never claimed to be any sort of 1337 hax0r or anything, but I do like tinkering with most anything to see if I can make it work better for me, from websites to my phone, to even ripping my toaster apart to see if I can mod it somehow.

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  29. interesting post!, that fish tank image is so freaking cool

    http://gadgetsreviewsite.blogspot.com/

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