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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (10929)	8/7/2005 9:57:38 AM
From: fred g	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank, PSTN cracking exists, but it's really not a big deal nowadays -- the grand age of Phone Phreaks is well behind us. It boils down to two things. One is blue boxing, which is historical; it stopped working over 20 years ago when CCIS6 replaced MF signaling. I am very, very well aware of how it works. While I was never part of that Scene, I bumped into it now and then, and indeed I still do look at 2600 Magazine in the rack at Borders (though I rarely see a reason to buy it). BTW its editor Eric Corley uses my father's name as his pen name. Now you may remember how sensitive the old Gong Show, er, Bell System was about these things. Back in 1975, I subscribed to 73 Magazine, which (a few months before I went to work there) ran a series of three articles named something like "Secrets of the Bell System". This led to a lawsuit, which I wrote about on abUsenet in 1990: yarchive.net . (BTW that might not post right. it ends 73 underscore magazine dot html .) That leaves PBX cracking. I don't consider that a gap in PSTN security, since the gap is outside the "network". Essentially it's like leaving a phone lying around for anybody to use. Dumb on the PBX operators' part, but not a design flaw in the PSTN itself. I do occasionally run into a CPE voice mail system that allows random callers to dial through, so customer manager error of that nature is still around. And you don't see as much of it now as you used to. For one thing, LD calling is cheap enough, so it's hardly worth the bother mowadays. Only some international routes are costly enough to be worth it. And the phun and "k3w1" factor just isn't there any more; the kind of k1dZ who were phreaks 25 years ago are probably script k1dd13Z nowadays. The difference is that in the Internet, a) it's possible to crack the middle, where service providers are; b) the edges and terminals are much, much more insecure; and c) there's much more anonymity and less traceability, again by design.