I got around to watching Boxing and phre ... / 2012-01-15

I got around to watching Boxing and phreaking presentation by BillSF and KC - Hackers on Planet Earth 1994 and suddenly some things I heard back then make a lot more sense to me. I had people tell about basic blueboxing, I read the documentation and I gave it a try on a (borrowed) demon dialer. But no success, and maybe that is for the best. Other people were better at this, some went to jail for it. One day, there is going to be an awesome book via The History of Phone Phreaking by Phil Lapsley with a lot of the stories.

Listening / watching this I went 'Oh!' and 'Right!' a few times, because of nuggets of information coming out. For example, the subtle differences between R1 signalling and C5 signalling which explains the difference between 2600 Hz only seize and 2400+2600 Hz seize. For R1 signalling, read an overview at the Wikipedia article on Blueboxing. For C5 (CCITT signalling system number 5) read the Wikipedia article on Signalling System No. 5.

The modern counterpart of all this, VoIP security attacks and defending against them, is what I get to play with now. This is all a lot more accessible with Asterisk and affordable computer - telephone interfaces.