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Three Blind Phreaks 313

Posted by CmdrTaco from the see-them-have-teh-phun dept.
Post writes "'When they dial, they use the middle finger.' - Wired's story about three sightless brothers who 'have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision.'"
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Three Blind Phreaks More

Three Blind Phreaks

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  • Three Blind Mice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fenis-Wolf ( 239374 ) <jbudde&a2tech,us> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:11PM (#8144221) Homepage
    Thats really cool. Reminds of the guy that first figured out that the Captain Crunch whistle exactly matched the long distance tones on the phone system.
    The good ol' days when you could get long distance...
    *sigh*

    • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:5, Informative)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) * <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:16PM (#8144264) Homepage Journal
      Would that be John 'Captain Crunch' Draper? [rotten.com]

      • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Directrix1 ( 157787 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:31PM (#8144364)
        This article just shows that even a blind person can be as big a dipsh!t, as anyone with sight. If they were ripping innocent people off without technology, there would be outrage. But the fact they are using "social engineering" and hacking techniques make them idols? Those who think this is cool, are more blind than the brothers.
        • Would they still be as cool if they were 3 blind spammers?

        • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fingerbear ( 602605 )
          I don't think they're cool because they're blind.

          I think they're cool for the same reason I'm impressed by Olympic athletes -- they've trained their bodies to do something that I doubt I'd ever be able to do. (identifying touch tones from across the room, etc.)
          • A slightly different spin on what you said.

            I think they are cool for showing they could overcome their physical impediment. Now contrast this with people who give up who don't have physical impediments.

            But phreaking the system...yeah, that's criminal.
        • It looks to me like these 3 guys were being rather selective in who they scammed. The credit cards they stole were from a phone sex mogul, and so one could morally make a decision that "If you're wasting your money on phone sex hotlines, you deserve some hassles with your credit card...."

          Their "big target" was the govt. sponsored radio/propaganda station .... again, not exactly like charging phone calls to the general public or a small business.
          • So it's OK, as long as they steal from people who you don't like? Reminds me of that overused and rather stupid "...there was nobody left to speak out for me" quote.

          • So theft isn't theft? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:45PM (#8144917) Homepage Journal
            Nothing like selective morality.

            So if you use phone sex hotlines you deserve to have your money stolen? If you use a dating service do you deserve the same thing? If you subscribe to a right-wing or left-wing newspaper do you deserve to be ripped off by someone?

            As for ripping off a government-sponsored radio station, who do you think is paying for it? Where does the government's money come from? It's not takin money from mom and pop directly, but it's not as though their not hurting the general public. People like to rail against government inefficiency and complain of mismanaged tax dollars. It's odd to me that someone would not be outraged by criminals directly stealing those tax dollars.

            These guys aren't exactly Robin Hoods.

            • I didn't say "Slashdot readers should accept what these guys did as morally right." I'm just pointing out that they did shows a considerable amount of selective scamming - which I have to think was intentional.

              The bottom line is, whatever you choose to do (or not do), say (or not say), you have to be comfortable with it in your own mind. Some folks just don't seem to have any conscience at all, so they go about doing whatever pleases them - with no guilt. (Murder someone just for fun? Why not!) Most of

        • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:3, Insightful)

          by telbij ( 465356 )
          You can still appreciate someone's talents even if you despise their morals. It's only about technology because it's on Slashdot, but I would be equally impressed by a brilliant criminal who didn't use technology. Problem is they usually exist only in Hollywood movies.

        • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Heisenbug ( 122836 )
          They're cool for the same reason that the guy in Catch Me If You Can is cool. It's an impressive display of skill. The cleverness is entertaining. It's also immoral and illegal, and ultimately isolating. I wouldn't do it.

          They're still cool.
    • What are you on about? John Draper wasn't blind.

    • Re:Three Blind Mice (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Osrin ( 599427 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:15PM (#8144669) Homepage
      When we had analog exchanges in the UK you used to be able to simply play with the dialing codes for free long distance. Each town had a long distance code you had to dial to get to it (i.e. 0254), they also had short dials that would allow you to dial adjecent towns to your own (i.e. 91 used to get me from Blackburn to Preston).

      If you could work it all out you used to be able to hop from town to town to town using the short dials. Long numbers to call, but much, much cheaper.

      I know, I know... offtopic, I'd all but forgotten about this.

  • Blind Joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:13PM (#8144235)
    A blind man was seen waiting at a street corner with his guide dog. After a short wait the dog started leading the blind man across the street against the red light.

    First a car comes screeching to a halt inches away from him, but still the dog leads on, then a bicyclist almost wipes them out and curses as he goes by. Finally in the last lane a truck swerves and barely misses them.

    After they reach the far corner the blind man reaches in his pocket and pulls out a cookie and offers it to the guide dog. At this point another person who has watched the entire episode interrupts asking why he was rewarding the dog after the dog had endangered his life and almost got him run over by a car, bicycle and truck.

    The blind man responded: "I'm not rewarding him, I'm just trying to find out which end is his head so I can kick him in the ass."

    • Another Blind Joke (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:26PM (#8144326)
      Two nuns are ordered to paint a room in the convent, and the last instruction of the Mother Superior is that they must not get even a drop of paint on their habits. After conferring about this for a while, the two nuns decide to lock the door of the room, strip off their habits, and paint in the nude. In the middle of the painting, there comes a knock at the door.

      "Who is it?", calls one of the nuns.

      "Blind man," replies a voice from the other side of the door.

      The two nuns look at each other and shrug, and, deciding that no harm can come from letting a blind man into the room, they open the door.

      "Hi, ladies, nice boobs" says the man, "where do you want these blinds?"

  • Best of all, they're not subject to things like.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:13PM (#8144236)
    ... hidden links to Goatse or Tubgirl.

    One advantage of their situation!!!

  • Nothing Special (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pocketfullofshells ( 722066 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:13PM (#8144238)
    from the article, "They called secretaries and said, 'I need to get in to do a repair. You need to give me the number and password.' Sometimes they succeeded, or else they'd get only the number and try to break the password by using proprietary programs."

    sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.

    But they make news because they are blind.

    DAMNIT why could'nt I have been born blind so I could make the news!

    • Re:Nothing Special (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pyrrus ( 97830 )
      Exactly. I remember reading in either The hacker crackdown
      or Underground that there were some blind phreaks who had such a honed sense
      of hearing that they could whistle tones more accuratly
      than the teleco equipment. Now /that/ is impressive.

    • Re:Nothing Special (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aTMsA ( 188604 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:27PM (#8144332)
      sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.

      But they make news because they are blind.

      Well if you read the article carefully, you'll see this:

      At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly.

      Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."

      This is something normal people usually can't do, but i've known blind people that can do that kind of "tricks"(they can also tell you if you're standing or sitting while talking on the phone, for example). Certainly being blind gives them some good social-engineering-enabling abilities, and they can also play the poor-blind-victim that'll probably soften the most paranoid secretary;

      Of course, if instead of touch-tone passwords these secretaries had been typing their passwords in a unix terminal, they would be screwed, and no amount of over-the-shoulder peeking would have helped them! ;)

    • Re:Nothing Special (Score:5, Insightful)

      by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:33PM (#8144375)
      sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.
      But they make news because they are blind.
      That's for damn sure, I'm a visually impaired programmer what doesen't commit crimes, where's my news story?

      Articles like these really piss me off. It makes it sound amazing that not only can blind people use computers but they can use them well enough to commit crime!

      Yeesh next thing'll be "Blindsploitation" movies...
      "Take that sighty!"
    • Besides, it's just not the same now that the big fat lazy monopoly is history and long distance is only worth at most 5 cents per minute.
    • OK, I hate this sort of post normally but this time it is justified.

      Normal phreakers cannot hear and instantly memorise touch tones, normal phreakers don't get away with large-scale crime taking down a p0rn empire, normal phreakers don't get away with it.

      As mentioned in replies earlier, these guys were elite hackers, and as far as I know elite hackers _do_ get a mention on /. and wired. How about you hone your skills as well as them, then start wishing to be blind.

      You quoted They called secretaries

  • Are they heroes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:13PM (#8144240) Homepage Journal
    It used to be cool to show off with these 'hacks' like phreaking and other service-theft tricks, but these days it seems that they would do better service to the name 'hacker' if they worked on things that made our world easier to live in, for both sightless and sighted folks.

    I'm not about to tell them what they should or shouldn't be doing, but sometimes you really have to wonder how the hacker community can take having borderline criminals like these three brothers calling themselves part of hackerdom.

    They are crackers, despite what they call themselves.
    • They are heroes only because they overcame a handicap to break the law.

      (oops forgot to add "in the eyes of the journalist" after heroes)
    • They are crackers, despite what they call themselves,

      Looking at their photo they don't look very white to me.

  • that's nice (Score:5, Funny)

    by andih8u ( 639841 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:16PM (#8144262)
    three sightless brothers who 'have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision

    I'm sure the judge will take that into consideration.
    • Why not - Wired somehow managed to decide that was somehow newsworth. I can't run very fast, but I'll bet I can loot and steal just as well as fast people... Maybe Wired will do an article on me, 'cause I'm "overcoming my disability" and therefore, a hero.
  • I'm more interested in the things they do, as opposed to the fact that they're blind. People shouldn't be defined in terms of their disability, but in what they do. (And judging by what these guys do, they seem like mere kiddies.)

  • Yeah, they're blind, so what (Score:4, Insightful)

    by W32.Klez.A ( 656478 ) * on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:17PM (#8144275) Homepage
    They're still thieves. The article doesn't really display any sense of apology from the brothers, and it sounds like they're just giving bullshit lines to make it sound like they're doing the old 'I switched to the good side' thing. I have ten bucks that says they'll be back to the same old thefts within a month.
    • >They're still thieves.

      Ummm.. so what? Why is this comment "Interesting"?

      Are are we reading up on these guys because they are "heros" or because its something to read?

      The History channel is filled with war/criminals. Look in your newspaper. Look at movies. Not filled with people who you nessesary would want as role-models.

  • I challenge them... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:24PM (#8144313)
    to a game of catch.

  • All of them? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dan14807 ( 162088 ) * on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:28PM (#8144336) Journal

    "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI..."

    So that's it, huh? Makes me wonder about the validity of their claim to be "hackers".

    • Re:All of them? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dan14807 ( 162088 ) *

      "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI..."

      And for those of you who don't actually know this: CGI is a protocol, not a language. Ugh. See parent. These kids are not hackers.

    • Re:All of them? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
      Don't forget that you're getting these quotes through at least two layers of indirection, namely the translator and the journalist. Despite the inverted commas, this is not necessarily anything resembling a direct quote.
      • I've found that jornalists tend to be pretty careful about that. Often quotes are out of context, but if they are in quotes, they are direct. I've been interviewed several times and in all cases, anything in quotes was word for word what I said. Sometimes they get the context wrong, but never a deliberate altering of the actual quote.

        I also worked at a paper, and they were careful about that. If they wanted to paraphrase you, they'd write something like: Sycraft said that he could program in basically any

  • Wired Slashdot? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sinus0idal ( 546109 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:28PM (#8144337)
    lol what has happened to Slashdot!

    "well, Wired said..."

    If we want Wired, we can read Wired! :) Want some originality...

    • Re:Wired Slashdot? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Idarubicin ( 579475 )
      If we want Wired, we can read Wired! :) Want some originality...

      Right, and that's what Slashdot does--it tells you about interesting articles on Wired. And in the New York Times, and the Guardian, and on Groklaw. Slashdot produces very little of its own content. There are a few book reviews and interview, but the bread and butter of Slashdot is providing links to interesting and/or useful articles in other news sources...and providing a venue in which its readers can comment on those stories.

  • text to voice (Score:5, Funny)

    by plams ( 744927 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:28PM (#8144343) Homepage
    so they use a text-to-voice module?

    Muzher: hey d00de, ping that server to see if it's still up
    Shadde: ok, bro.. *clickety*

    Voice: pinging.. one hundred... twenty.. seven.. dot.. zero!.. dot.. zero!.. dot.. one with.. thirty.. two... bytes.. of.. data.. colon..

    newline.... newline...

    reply from.. one hundred... twenty.. seven.. dot.. zero!.. dot.. zero!.. dot.. one.. colon.. bytes equals.. thirty two.. time... one.. M..S.. TEE-TEE-L equals.. one hundred.. twenty.. eight...

    Ramy: wait a minute.. hey! you're pinging yourself you stupid blind fuck!
    • RTFA. They used braille displays. Whether alone or in conjunction with voice recognition, I can't say, but for things like source listings and such, a braille display would probably be a boon to the hacker who lacks the convenience of sight.
  • have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision.

    you know, though - how often do you hear about what those sighted people are doing?

  • CGI, HTML Programming Languages? (Score:4, Funny)

    by nick_urbanik ( 534101 ) <`gro.ukcin' `ta' `ukcin'> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:45PM (#8144458) Homepage
    "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI.

    I'm not as advanced. I know the Perl language, but I havn't learned the CGI language. Also, I still haven't learned how to write a loop in HTML.

  • This just goes to show (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:46PM (#8144460) Journal
    what you can achieve when you're not looking at porn all day.

  • Phreaking is only fun and games (Score:4, Funny)

    by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:47PM (#8144469) Homepage
    until someone loses an eye... ok- you know what I mean.

    And these super duper blind phreakers are so good they never got cau... um. I'm sure I've got a point here somewhere.

    Ok, perhaps not :-)

    Why is this news exactly?

  • My my... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @01:59PM (#8144562) Homepage
    As a deaf guy I just have to say... living your life based on revenge and sticking it to others is a sad way of living. All you do is repeat the unfair sort of situations that made you so PO'ed and produce an army of other angry PO'ed people... ooohhh... negative feedback loop! Cutting people off on the freeway and tailgating doesn't solve your problems. It's funny how people in left hand turn lanes get upset at people running red lights keeping them from making their turn... so they in "revenge" run their red light and cause different people to miss THEIR turn, who then in return... blaaahhh... just live by "The Golden Rule" and everybody is a little bit happier.

  • My favorite hacker of all time in the best hacker movie of all time also suffered from an afliction of being sightless.

    While this movie was in fact "Made In America (TM)" and these boys are in Israel, I am upset.

    Not one of them in the story claimed to have used the alias "Whistler" .

    BTW - Being blind and being a hacker isn't exactly something thats new to us people in "The Industry".

  • "I am inventing a PBX firewall," [Ramy] says. "I know all the weakest spots of a telephone system. I can protect any system from infiltration."

    Oh sure ... and how much do you want to bet that it doens't have a back door in it?

    • Like so much "computer security" out there, I think this is one of those devices that could generate lots of revenue - but ultimately, is a waste.

      If they're smart, they *won't* put in a back door, because any hint of its existance leaking out would totally destroy their sales.

      The bigger issue is, why are corporate PBX's getting hacked in the first place? I'd say it's mainly due to lack of knowledge of their functionality by their owners!

      99% of businesses I've run across have a fairly complex PBX system

  • Double standard.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NeoSkandranon ( 515696 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:02PM (#8144580)
    If they had their sight, they would be criminals.

    Since they're blind they are....?

    Still criminals. Though the wired story would have you believe otherwise.

  • A thief is a thief is (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Talsin ( 164230 )
    a thief. Regardless of how "skilled" they are who cares? All they did was cheat, steal and lie. I really dont get the point of this article, why do we reward criminals?

  • Blind C Coder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Qwell ( 684661 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:05PM (#8144600)
    This is slightly off topic, but I feel that it's interesting and related none-the-less.

    Several years ago, I used to be the primary admin/coder of a MUD(Multi User Dungeon{A game online...}). I was randomly watching people play, and I noticed that there was one player who had no "prompt(a status bar that you see after every action)". I questioned this player, as to why he didn't have one, and he went on to explain that he was completely blind, and it made his text-to-speech software go nuts, because it was far too much information, too quickly.

    Anyhow, one day, he asked if he could help out with a little bit of coding...I was intrigued. I asked him to write me a small command, and he was done in about 30 minutes. I'll admit, I'm not the best coder in the world, but this was some of the cleanest code I had ever seen. A blind man named Dave(I think), was a better coder then most people I know... If that isn't inspiring, I don't know what is.

  • blind script kiddies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by krappie ( 172561 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:13PM (#8144657)
    Sorry, but I wasnt really impressed by these people. I've always heard that blind people make the best phone phreakers. Thats probably true. When you deal with an entire system based on sound frequencies I can see blind people having an advantage.

    But whats the point of the article? They're just 3 blind script kiddies that think they can hack the planet. I see people with vision every day committing credit card fraud. Why are these guys bragging about it on Wired? THEY EVEN GOT CAUGHT. GENIUSES!!

    And what is this?!

    But Ramy was too ambitious to stop there. "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI.

    CGI isnt a language! And thats a direct quote from him. What kind of idiot says "I can program in CGI."

    Sorry, but these are just three script kiddies causing the usual problems that script kiddies cause. Am I supposed to be impressed?

  • Social Engineering (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LordoftheFrings ( 570171 ) <[ac.tsefgarf] [ta] [llun]> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:16PM (#8144684) Homepage
    I like stories like this that don't portray people who play with phone systems and computers in an intrusive way as reclusive introverts. It clearly shows that these brothers are experts at social engineering. They manipulated people with such expertise and skill that the people did anything the brothers wanted. That can be the most dangerous aspect of security.

  • Idle hands... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SJS ( 1851 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:24PM (#8144757) Homepage Journal
    There is no indication in the article that the brothers actually have had jobs or other responsibilities. It's no wonder they they got into this sort of thing...

    And, of course, there are other amusing bits...

    But Ramy was too ambitious to stop there. "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI."
    That's a pretty... limited view of what "all the (programming) languages" are.

    I'll grant that they're clever; that, and too much time on their hands made 'em dangerous and irresponsible.

    After encountering their first computer, in 1989, at Tel Aviv's Center for the Blind, Ramy and Muzher became enchanted with the IBM clones.
    No wonder they turned out to be criminals!

  • Society (Score:4, Interesting)

    by marijnm ( 454978 ) <marijn@bitpit.net> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @02:25PM (#8144760) Homepage
    This sounds so familiar. While I'm not blind, but spastic [spastic.nl], society treats you like you're some moron. Your esteem for other people kinda drops when you get treated like an idiot day in, day out. If you are able to convert your anger towards other people into something good, ie. acquiring skills, you definitely have an edge.

    How you use your skills is another thing, but you generally don't respect the rules of society as much as you should because you feel society doesn't respect you as much as itt should.

  • The story works because (Score:5, Interesting)

    by philipkd ( 528838 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @03:07PM (#8145071) Homepage
    1) First, hackers are heroes to the tech community. Actually, hackers are heroes in a all communities. Keaneu Reeves in the Matrix, Matthew Broderick in WarGames, Ed Furlong in T2, and the guys from Office Space. There is something about sticking it to the man through technology. One because you don't see the victim as you would when someone robs a liquor store, two because there is no physical violence, and three if its done against a major corporation then it's like they deserve it somehow. Plus there is the whole "concentrated gain, dispersed loss" thing For a big telco, three phreakers using free service does not dent their pocket book but certainly helps the attackers.

    2) It's in a foreign country. Americans have a numbness to foreign pain. Look how the 20,000 large death toll from Iranian's earthquake did not rattle Americans. So when we hear about Israelis getting hacked by blind Palestinians we are equally passive, especially since many feel the Israeli's deserve it in someway.

    3) Their blind and they're overcoming challenge.

    "People said that God cursed our mother by giving her three blind sons," recalls Ramy. "Children beat us on the backs of our legs. Those abuses left scars on our hearts. But they also forced us to grow stronger."

    When you hear that it cannot help but make you feel proud for these guys. Overcoming their obstacle of blindness is just amazing in general. It's a testament to human resilience and therefore the type of story that inspires hope--something much needed in our outsourcing-paranoid IT workers.

    If these were, on the other hand, three blind robbers in San Francisco who stole purses from Old Grannies, yeah, this wouldn't get the same coverage.

  • Mittens and earplugs... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by qtp ( 461286 ) on Saturday January 31, 2004 @03:27PM (#8145255) Journal
    The biggest only thing that is leading some to consider these jerks "heros" is thier disability. Reading the article, I find little to respect about thier "skilz" as it seems that most of thier tech-dependant exploits were performed using software not written by themselves. Knowing what script to run does not necessarily imply an understanding of how it works.

    The sad thing is that it seems that those with little or no skill garner acolades if they also demonstrate an accompanying lack of restraint or outright dishonesty. While contientious tech explorers and practitioners go unnoticed by the media, loud mouthed script kiddies [attrition.org] and clueless "experts" [grc.com] get to tout thier wares and mythical skills to the most respected security companies [attrition.org].

    As to whether thier sentancing was apropriate, it seems a little light to me. In keeping with Mitnik's extended probation from computing equipment, these jerks should be sentanced to mittens and earplugs for the next five years.

  • Why I played with the phone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by billsf ( 34378 ) <billsf@cuba.ca[ ].nl ['lyx' in gap]> on Saturday January 31, 2004 @04:54PM (#8145854) Homepage Journal
    "Phreaking" was hacking with a cause. Nothing like Cyber (trolls) Hippies or some dipshit "community spirit". When I was a very young kid, my bluebox (R1) was was my ticket to ride. With all the people I met, I am what I am today. You'd never know in America (where I grew up) what a crock Vietnam was from the start, the "Cold War" was a farce, Nixon was a super crook and on and on. __People__ told me what the press dared not report!

    Due to an obscure Federal law, it was a crime to get priviladged service from the only 'provider' there was then: Ma Bell. It never bothered me to break a stupid law and never at any time was using a circuit that would have been otherwise idle wrong. In the early days, it may have cost a few bucks to make an international call but times were to change, but the rates didn't reflect that.

    Europe, 1989, and wow, its legal! Armed with the knowledge that a transAtlantic call cost about $0.05/min and the consumer was charged about $3.00/min brought a new cause. Here in Europe, we took it to the press and won our case. While we were paying a few cents a minute to call, Americans were still paying a few dollars. Yes, they made it somewhat illegal in 1993 but the battle was won and then and only then was it associated with a bunch of Amiga lamers and criminals that made one-trick boxes.

    As a 'phreak' I applied what i knew about Unix and its rather crude scheduling at the time. Finding a new 'trick' was a treat. First one in a hacker, copycats, criminals. Like writing code, it can take allot of persistence. Often more as the only feedback was sound and ofcourse, social engineering. I took great pride in asking the switchman if he noticed me in his system and the answer always: "No". Those musical Amigas enevitably played at the wrong level was always a giveaway: You could hear the timbre of an Amiga in the crosstalk!

    Except for possibly mobile phones, there is no reason to do this stuff today. Unix and Internet are more interesting anyways. Phreaking was my way in to the Unix crowd and all the hackers that make 'mousing arround' possible for so many today. And guess what: You sheep out there spam, flood, use html attachments and cause general mayhem for a system that is as fragile as the phone was in the past. Criminal I'm not. And you with your software out of a cerial box? Did it ever occur to you why commercial software is packaged like that?

    Believe it, it takes alot of skill to twidle a call. It takes nothing to ruin the Internet and so many of you are doing it now. I'm very proud it did it and still benefit today by not doing it. It is nice to know if there is ever a war or situation that requires it, I can do it and with computers, so much more.

    "Three Blind Mice", nice to hear the story again. Blind people can type and often run a Votrax (the real speech synthesiser) at 200 WPM or more. I'm sighted and can read alot faster than that, but most can't.

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