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Phreaking is a
slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...
term coined to describe the activity of a
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a
sensational spelling Sensational spelling is the deliberate spelling of a word in a non-standard way for special effect. Branding Sensational spellings are common in advertising and product placement. In particular, brand names such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (''c ...
of the word ''
freak A freak is a person who is physically deformed or transformed due to an extraordinary medical condition or body modification. This definition was first attested with this meaning in the 1880s as a shorter form of the phrase " freak of nature ...
'' with the ''ph-'' from '' phone'', and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. ''Phreak'', ''phreaker'', or ''phone phreak'' are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking. The term first referred to groups who had
reverse engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
the system of tones used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the phone handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world. To ease the creation of these tones, electronic tone generators known as
blue box A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. ...
es became a staple of the phreaker community. This community included future
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The blue box era came to an end with the ever-increasing use of computerized phone systems which allowed telecommunication companies to discontinue the use of in-band signaling for call routing purposes. Instead, dialing information was sent on a separate channel which was inaccessible to the telecom customer. By the 1980s, most of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in the US and Western Europe had adopted the SS7 system which uses out-of-band signaling for call control (and which is still in use to this day). Phreaking has since become closely linked with
computer hacking A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
.


History

Phone phreaking got its start in the late 1950s in the United States and become prominent in the 1960s and early 1970s. Phone phreaks spent a lot of time dialing around the telephone network to understand how the phone system worked, engaging in activities such as listening to the pattern of tones to figure out how calls were routed, reading obscure telephone company technical journals, learning how to impersonate operators and other telephone company personnel, digging through telephone company trash bins to find "secret" documents, sneaking into telephone company buildings at night and wiring up their own telephones, building electronic devices called blue boxes, black boxes, and red boxes to help them explore the network and make free phone calls, hanging out on early conference call circuits and "loop arounds" to communicate with one another and writing their own newsletters to spread information. Before 1984, long-distance telephone calls were a premium item in the United States, with strict regulations. In some locations, calling across the street counted as long distance. To report that a phone call was long-distance meant an elevated importance because the calling party is paying by the minute to speak to the called party. Phreaking consists of techniques to evade long-distance charges. This evasion is illegal; the crime is called "toll fraud". In 1990, the pager cloning technique arose and was used by
law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Education ...
. In the UK the situation was rather different due to the difference in technology between the American and British systems, the main difference being the absence of tone dialing and signaling, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The tone system in the United States has been almost entirely replaced, but in some countries, in addition to new systems, the tone system is still available, for example in Italy.


Switch hook and tone dialer

Possibly one of the first phreaking methods was switch-hooking, which allows placing calls from a phone where the rotary dial or keypad has been disabled by a key lock or other means to prevent unauthorized calls from that phone. It is done by rapidly pressing and releasing the switch hook to open and close the subscriber circuit, simulating the pulses generated by the rotary dial. Even most current telephone exchanges support this method, as they need to be backward compatible with old subscriber hardware. By rapidly clicking the hook for a variable number of times at roughly 5 to 10 clicks per second, separated by intervals of roughly one second, the caller can dial numbers as if they were using the rotary dial. The pulse counter in the exchange counts the pulses or clicks and interprets them in two possible ways. Depending on continent and country, one click with a following interval can be either "one" or "zero" and subsequent clicks before the interval are additively counted. This renders ten consecutive clicks being either "zero" or "nine", respectively. Some exchanges allow using additional clicks for special controls, but numbers 0-9 now fall in one of these two standards. One special code, "flash", is a very short single click, possible but hard to simulate. Back in the day of rotary dial, technically identical phone sets were marketed in multiple areas of the world, only with plugs matched by country and the dials being bezeled with the local standard numbers. Such key-locked telephones, if wired to a modern
DTMF Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...
capable exchange, can also be exploited by a tone dialer that generates the DTMF tones used by modern keypad units. These signals are now very uniformly standardized worldwide. It is notable that the two methods can be combined: Even if the exchange does not support DTMF, the key lock can be circumvented by switch-hooking, and the tone dialer can be then used to operate automated DTMF controlled services that can not be used with rotary dial.


2600 hertz

The origins of phone phreaking trace back at least to
AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
's implementation of fully automatic
switches In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...
. These switches used
tone dialing Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...
, a form of in-band signaling, and included some tones which were for internal telephone company use. One internal-use tone is a tone of
2600 Hz A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. ...
which causes a telephone switch to think the call had ended, leaving an open carrier line, which can be exploited to provide free long-distance, and international calls. At that time, long-distance calls were more expensive. The tone was discovered in approximately 1957, by Joe Engressia, a blind seven-year-old boy. Engressia had
perfect pitch Perfect commonly refers to: * Perfection, completeness, excellence * Perfect (grammar), a grammatical category in some languages Perfect may also refer to: Film * ''Perfect'' (1985 film), a romantic drama * ''Perfect'' (2018 film), a science ...
, and discovered that whistling the fourth E above middle C (a frequency of 2637.02 Hz) would stop a dialed phone recording. Unaware of what he had done, Engressia called the phone company and asked why the recordings had stopped. Joe Engressia is considered to be the father of phreaking. Other early phreaks, such as "Bill from New York" (William "Bill" Acker 1953-2015), began to develop a rudimentary understanding of how phone networks worked. Bill discovered that a recorder he owned could also play the tone at 2600 Hz with the same effect.
John Draper John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a widely known figure within the ...
discovered through his friendship with Engressia that the free whistles given out in
Cap'n Crunch Cap'n Crunch is a corn and oat breakfast cereal manufactured by Quaker Oats Company, a subsidiary of PepsiCo since 2001. After introducing the original cereal in 1963, marketed simply as ''Cap'n Crunch'', Quaker Oats has since introduced numer ...
cereal boxes also produced a 2600 Hz tone when blown (providing his nickname, "Captain Crunch"). This allows control of phone systems that work on single frequency (SF) controls. One can sound a long whistle to reset the line, followed by groups of whistles (a short tone for a "1", two for a "2", etc.) to dial numbers.


Multi frequency

While single-frequency worked on certain phone routes, the most common signaling on the then long-distance network was
multi-frequency In telephony, multi-frequency signaling (MF) is a type of signaling that was introduced by the Bell System after World War II. It uses a combination of audible tones for address (telephone number) transport and supervision signaling on trunk line ...
(MF) controls. The slang term for these tones and their use was "Marty Freeman". The specific frequencies required were unknown to the general public until 1954, when the Bell System published the information in the '' Bell System Technical Journal'' in an article describing the methods and frequencies used for inter-office signalling. The journal was intended for the company's engineers; however, it found its way to various college campuses across the United States. With this one article, the Bell System accidentally gave away the "keys to the kingdom", and the intricacies of the phone system were at the disposal of people with a knowledge of electronics. The second generation of phreaks arose at this time, including New Yorkers "Evan Doorbell", "Ben Decibel" and Neil R. Bell and Californians Mark Bernay, Chris Bernay, and "Alan from Canada". Each conducted their own independent exploration and experimentation of the telephone network, initially on an individual basis, and later within groups as they discovered each other in their travels. "Evan Doorbell", "Ben" and "Neil" formed a group of phreaks, known as "Group Bell". Bernay initiated a similar group named the "Mark Bernay Society". Both Bernay and Evan received fame amongst today's phone phreakers for internet publications of their collection of telephone exploration recordings. These recordings, conducted in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s are available at Mark's website ''Phone Trips''.


Blue boxes

In October 1971, phreaking was introduced to the masses when ''Esquire'' magazine published a story called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" by
Ron Rosenbaum Ronald Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist. Life and career Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated fr ...
. This article featured Engressia and John Draper prominently, synonymising their names with phreaking. The article also attracted the interest of other soon-to-be phreaks, such as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who went on to found Apple Computer. 1971 also saw the beginnings of ''YIPL'' (''Youth International Party Line''), a publication started by Abbie Hoffman and Al Bell to provide information to
Yippies The Youth International Party (YIP), whose members were commonly called Yippies, was an American youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the late 1960s. It was founded on D ...
on how to "beat the man", mostly involving telephones. In the first issue of ''YIPL'', writers included a "shout-out" to all of the phreakers who provided technological information for the newsletter: "We at YIPL would like to offer thanks to all you phreaks out there." In the last issue, YIPL stated:
YIPL believes that education alone cannot affect the System, but education can be an invaluable tool for those willing to use it. Specifically, YIPL will show you why something must be done immediately in regard, of course, to the improper control of the communication in this country by none other than bell telephone company.
In 1973, Al Bell would move YIPL over and start TAP (Technological American Party). Al Bell was denied opening a bank account under the name of ''Technological American Party'', since he was not a
political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...
, so he changed the name to ''Technological Assistance Program'' to get a bank account. TAP developed into a major source for subversive technical information among phreaks and hackers all over the world. TAP ran from 1973 to 1984, with Al Bell handing over the magazine to "Tom Edison" in the late 1970s. TAP ended publication in 1984 due mostly to a break-in and arson at Tom Edison's residence in 1983. Cheshire Catalyst then took over running the magazine for its final (1984) year. A controversially suppressed article "Regulating the Phone Company In Your Home" in ''Ramparts'' magazine (June 1972) increased interest in phreaking. This article published simple schematic plans of a "
black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...
" used to make free long-distance phone calls, and included a very short parts list that could be used to construct one. AT&T forced ''Ramparts'' to pull all copies from shelves, but not before numerous copies were sold and many regular subscribers received them.


Computer hacking

In the 1980s, the revolution of the
personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
and the popularity of computer
bulletin board systems A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such a ...
(BBSes) (accessed via
modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
) created an influx of tech-savvy users. These BBSes became popular for computer hackers and others interested in the technology, and served as a medium for previously scattered independent phone phreaks to share their discoveries and experiments. This not only led to unprecedented collaboration between phone phreaks, but also spread the notion of phreaking to others who took it upon themselves to study, experiment with, or exploit the telephone system. This was also at a time when the telephone company was a popular subject of discussion in the US, as the
monopoly A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...
of
AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
was forced into divestiture. During this time, exploration of telephone networks diminished, and phreaking focused more on toll fraud. Computer hackers began to use phreaking methods to find the telephone numbers for modems belonging to businesses, which they could exploit later. Groups then formed around the BBS hacker/phreaking (H/P) community such as the famous
Masters of Deception Masters of Deception (MOD) was a New York–based group of hackers, most widely known in media for their exploits of telephone company infrastructure and later prosecution. Origin of Masters of Deception MOD's initial membership grew from m ...
( Phiber Optik) and
Legion of Doom The Legion of Doom is a group of supervillains who originated in '' Challenge of the Super Friends'', an animated series from Hanna-Barbera based on DC Comics' Justice League. The Legion of Doom has since been incorporated into the main DC Univer ...
(
Erik Bloodaxe Eric Haraldsson ( non, Eiríkr Haraldsson , no, Eirik Haraldsson; died 954), nicknamed Bloodaxe ( non, blóðøx , no, Blodøks) and Brother-Slayer ( la, fratrum interfector), was a 10th-century Norwegian king. He ruled as King of Norway from ...
) groups. In 1985, an underground e-zine called ''
Phrack ''Phrack'' is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkab ...
'' (a combination of the words phreak and hack) began circulation among BBSes, and focused on hacking, phreaking, and other related technological subjects. In the early 1990s, groups like Masters of Deception and Legion of Doom were shut down by the
US Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and ...
's
Operation Sundevil Operation Sundevil was a 1990 nationwide United States Secret Service crackdown on "illegal computer hacking activities." It involved raids in approximately fifteen different cities and resulted in three arrests and the confiscation of computers, ...
. Phreaking as a subculture saw a brief dispersion in fear of criminal prosecution in the 1990s, before the popularity of the
internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
initiated a reemergence of phreaking as a subculture in the US and spread phreaking to international levels. Into the turn of the 21st century, phreaks began to focus on the exploration and playing with the network, and the concept of toll fraud became widely frowned on among serious phreakers, primarily under the influence of the website Phone Trips, put up by second generation phreaks
Mark Bernay Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fin ...
and Evan Doorbell.


Toll fraud

The 1984 AT&T breakup gave rise to many small companies intent upon competing in the long-distance market. These included the then-fledgling Sprint and MCI, both of whom had only recently entered the marketplace. At the time, there was no way to switch a phone line to have calls automatically carried by non-AT&T companies. Customers of these small long-distance operations would be required to dial a local access number, enter their calling card number, and finally enter the area code and phone number they wish to call. Because of the relatively lengthy process for customers to complete a call, the companies kept the calling card numbers short – usually 6 or 7 digits. This opened up a huge vulnerability to phone phreaks with a computer. 6-digit calling card numbers only offer 1 million combinations. 7-digit numbers offer just 10 million. If a company had 10,000 customers, a person attempting to "guess" a card number would have a good chance of doing so correctly once every 100 tries for a 6-digit card and once every 1000 tries for a 7-digit card. While this is almost easy enough for people to do manually, computers made the task far easier. "Code hack" programs were developed for computers with modems. The modems would dial the long-distance access number, enter a random calling card number (of the proper number of digits), and attempt to complete a call to a computer bulletin board system (BBS). If the computer connected successfully to the BBS, it proved that it had found a working card number, and it saved that number to disk. If it did not connect to the BBS in a specified amount of time (usually 30 or 60 seconds), it would hang up and try a different code. Using this method, code hacking programs would turn up hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of working calling card numbers per day. These would subsequently be shared amongst fellow phreakers. There was no way for these small phone companies to identify the culprits of these hacks. They had no access to local phone company records of calls into their access numbers, and even if they had access, obtaining such records would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. While there was some advancement in tracking down these code hackers in the early 1990s, the problem did not completely disappear until most long-distance companies were able to offer standard 1+ dialing without the use of an access number.


Diverters

Another method of obtaining free phone calls involves the use of "diverters". Call forwarding was not an available feature for many business phone lines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so they were forced to buy equipment that could do the job manually between two phone lines. When the business would close, they would program the call diverting equipment to answer all calls, pick up another phone line, call their answering service, and bridge the two lines together. This gave the appearance to the caller that they were directly forwarded to the company's answering service. The switching equipment would typically reset the line after the call had hung up and timed out back to dial tone, so the caller could simply wait after the answering service had disconnected, and would eventually get a usable dial tone from the second line. Phreakers recognized the opportunity this provided, and they would spend hours manually dialing businesses after hours, attempting to identify faulty diverters. Once a phreaker had access to one of these lines, they could use it for one of many purposes. In addition to completing phone calls anywhere in the world at the businesses' expense, they could also dial 1-900 phone sex/entertainment numbers, as well as use the line to harass their enemies without fear of being traced. Victimized small businesses were usually required to foot the bill for the long-distance calls, as it was their own private equipment (not phone company security flaws) that allowed such fraud to occur. By 1993, call forwarding was offered to nearly every business line subscriber, making these diverters obsolete. As a result, hackers stopped searching for the few remaining ones, and this method of toll fraud died. Many (different type) of diverters still exist and are actively "phreaked" in the United States as of 2020, It is rare to find a diverter solely used for Answering Service forwarding anymore, but the many other types such as phone-company test numbers and remote PBX DISAs are still used as diverters.


Voice mail boxes and bridges

Before the BBS era of the 1980s phone phreaking was more of a solitary venture as it was difficult for phreaks to connect with one another. In addition to communicating over BBSs phone phreaks discover
voice mail A voicemail system (also known as voice message or voice bank) is a computer-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to ind ...
boxes and party lines as ways to network and keep in touch over the telephone. They usually appropriate unused boxes that are part of business or cellular phone systems. Once a vulnerable mailbox system is discovered, word would spread around the phreak community, and scores of them would take residence on the system. They use these systems as a "home base" for communication with one another until the rightful owners would discover the intrusion and wipe them off. Voice mailboxes also provide a safe phone number for phreaks to give out to one another as home phone numbers and personal cellular numbers would allow the phreak's identity (and home address) to be discovered. This is especially important given that phone phreaks are breaking the law. Phreakers also use "bridges" to communicate live with one another. The term "bridge" originally referred to a group of telephone company test lines that were bridged together giving the effect of a party-line. Eventually, all party-lines, whether bridges or not, came to be known as bridges if primarily populated by hackers and/or phreakers. The popularity of the Internet in the mid-1990s, along with the better awareness of voice mail by business and cell phone owners, made the practice of stealing voice mailboxes less popular. To this day bridges are still very popular with phreakers yet, with the advent of VoIP, the use of telephone company owned bridges has decreased slightly in favor of phreaker-owned conferences.


Mobile phones

By the late 1990s, the fraudulent aspect of phreaking all but vanished. In the United States most
mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
s offered unlimited domestic long-distance calling for the price of standard airtime (often totally unlimited on weekends), and flat-rate long-distance plans appeared offering unlimited home phone long-distance for as little as $25 per month. Rates for international telephone calls had also decreased significantly and by the 2000s, the advent of applications offering OTT voice calls over the internet provided no-cost alternatives for international calls. Between the much higher risk of being caught (due to advances in technology) and the much lower gain of making free phone calls, toll fraud started to become a concept associated very little with phreaking.


End of multi-frequency in the United States

The end of
multi-frequency In telephony, multi-frequency signaling (MF) is a type of signaling that was introduced by the Bell System after World War II. It uses a combination of audible tones for address (telephone number) transport and supervision signaling on trunk line ...
(MF) phreaking in the lower 48 United States occurred on June 15, 2006, when the last exchange in the contiguous
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
to use a "phreakable" MF-signalled trunk replaced the aging (yet still well kept) N2 carrier with a T1 carrier. This exchange, located in Wawina Township, Minnesota, was run by the Northern Telephone Company of Minnesota.


From 2010 to present

Recent notable instances of phreaking involve hacking of
VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
systems. In 2011, the government of the Philippines and the
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
arrested four hackers for phone phreaking through PBX hacking. In 2015, Pakistani officials arrested a prominent phreaker who had amassed more than $50 million from PBX hacking activities.


In popular culture

*In the movie ''
WarGames ''WarGames'' is a 1983 American science fiction techno-thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film, which stars Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Ally Sheedy, follow ...
'' (1983), a young hacker, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick), uses a pull-tab from an aluminum can, found on the ground at a truck stop, to make a free long-distance call via payphone to his friend (Ally Sheedy). *In the movie ''
The Core ''The Core'' is a 2003 American science fiction disaster film directed by Jon Amiel and starring Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, D. J. Qualls, Richard Jenkins, Tcheky Karyo, Bruce Greenwood, and Alfre Woodard. The f ...
'', the hacker known as "Rat" uses phreaking to give Doctor Josh Keyes unlimited long-distance for life to prove his skills. *In the '' Person of Interest'' episode ''Aletheia'', main character
Harold Finch Sir Harold Josiah Finch (2 May 189816 July 1979) was a Welsh Labour Party politician born in Barry, Glamorgan. He was a miners' agent in Blackwood after the First World War, Finch was a contemporary of Aneurin Bevan and accompanied him ...
uses phreaking to call someone in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
in 1979 as a prank. On October 27, 1980, Finch uses phreaking to hack
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
, an action that causes him to be wanted for
treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
. *During the third season of '' Hannibal'', the titular character phreaks a phone from his cell in order to get the address of Will Graham to pass on to
Francis Dolarhyde Francis Dolarhyde is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel '' Red Dragon'', as well as its film adaptations, '' Manhunter'' and '' Red Dragon''. Dolarhyde is a serial killer who murders entire families by ...
. *In the 1995 film '' Hackers'', there is a character nicknamed "The Phantom Phreak" or "Phreak" for short, who specializes in phreaking. * In the third season of ''
Twin Peaks ''Twin Peaks'' is an American mystery serial drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and originally ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 for ...
'', "Mr. C" uses phreaking techniques to disrupt prison security systems so he can make a private phone call without being overheard. * In the second season of '' Mr. Robot'', Leslie Romero is described as being the best phreaker in the 'game', himself adding that he practically invented the practice of phreaking. * In the book ''
Ready Player One ''Ready Player One'' is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality gam ...
'', phreaking is referenced as a clue to find the Jade Key - a series of clues in OASIS to win a fortune. * In the animated series ''
Infinity Train ''Infinity Train'' is an American animated television series created by Owen Dennis, previously a writer and storyboard artist on ''Regular Show''. four seasons have aired, plus a series of short episodes. The pilot for the series was releas ...
'', a character uses a flute to phreak a public telephone in order to call for a taxi.


See also

* 2600: The Hacker Quarterly *
BlueBEEP ''BlueBEEP'' was a popular blue boxing computer program for MS-DOS written between 1993–1995 by the German programmer Stefan Andreas Scheytt, known by the pseudonym Onkel Dittmeyer. Used correctly, it could be used to exploit vulnerabilities i ...
* Busy line interrupt *
Hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...
* In-band signaling *
Novation CAT Novation, in contract law and business law, is the act of – # replacing an obligation to perform with another obligation; or # adding an obligation to perform; or # replacing a party to an agreement with a new party. In international law, no ...
*
Phil Lapsley Philip D. Lapsley (born 1965) is an electrical engineer, hacker, author and entrepreneur. Early life Lapsley attended the University of California, Berkeley in the 1980s, graduating with a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering and computer sci ...
, author of ''Exploding the Phone'', a comprehensive history of phreaking *
Phone hacking Phone hacking is the practice of exploring a mobile device often using computer exploits to analyze everything from the lowest memory and central processing unit levels up to the highest file system and process levels. Modern open source toolin ...
*
Telephone tapping Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
*
Phone Losers of America The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking e-zine. Today the PLA hosts the popular prank call podcast the ''Snow Plow Show'' which it has hosted since 2012. History ...
* ''
Phrack ''Phrack'' is an e-zine written by and for hackers, first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkab ...
'' * Phreaking box *
Social engineering (security) Social engineering may refer to: * Social engineering (political science), a means of influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale * Social engineering (security), obtaining confidential information by manipulating and/o ...
*
Software cracking Software cracking (known as "breaking" mostly in the 1980s) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software (software cracker), especially copy protection featur ...
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References


External links

* Bevard, Charles W. (1966-05-31)
Five Students Psych Bell System, Place Free Long Distance Calls
by
The Harvard Crimson ''The Harvard Crimson'' is the student newspaper of Harvard University and was founded in 1873. Run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates, it served for many years as the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Beginning in the f ...
* Rosenbaum, Ron. (October 1971
"Secrets of the Little Blue Box"
Esquire (magazine). – via
Slate (magazine) ''Slate'' is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former '' New Republic'' editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In ...
. * Lapsley, Phil (February 5, 2013)
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell
Wired (magazine) ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fr ...

The History of Phone Phreaking .org

Textfiles.com / phreak
Large collection of phreaking related text files. ** See also
audio conferences
Textfiles.com *
Phreaky Boys
Recordings made in 1990 of voice mail box systems compromised by phreakers.
Digital Information Society

AusPhreak
- Australia's oldest and largest phreaking forum
Phone Trips
Large collection of historical phone recordings.
Sounds & Recordings of Wawina, Minnesota
– Telephone World
WarDialers.org
- an attempt to catalog all 8/16 bit wardialers and similar * Christina Xu. (May 12, 2008
The Secrets of the Little Pamphlet
fo

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
via
All of the Above
{{Phreaking Boxes Telephone crimes