[HaBi 1]    YIPL No. 20 - July 1973

YIPL No. 20 - July 1973 Dear YIPL, The New York Telephone Company originally publicized these numbers when it introduced International Direct Distance Dialing (DDD), but for some reason the numbers - were not mentioned in the new brochures. Perhaps they felt that these recordings would encourage people to use their boxes for calls to other countries. In any case, here is the complete list of recordings: FOREIGN TELEPHONE SIGNALS (212) 363-8888 Norway and Sweden (212) 363-8889 Italy and Luxembourg (212) 363-8849 Switzerland and Denmark (212) 797-8029 Greece and Spain (212) 797-8079 Australia and Japan (212) 797-8729 British Isles and France (212) 797-8798 Belgium and Germany The local A&P has two pay phones but they ripped out the number plate since the A&P chain doesn't want the public to know the number of the pay phones in their stores. I tried dialing 958 but it didn't work (although it works in other pay phones). Any ideas why 958 didn't work? Can A&P request the telephone company to disconnect the Automatic Number Identification from its phones? -,T. R. , N. Y. - Could be that the exchange of the particular pay phone has another ANI number. Try ringback, the bell may have been deactivated anyway. Complain to the manager that someone might have to reach you while shopping, and you might go to a store that doesn't make already lousy service even worse. But it isn't likely Bell disconnected ANI just from those pay phones. Also, try reason with the manager, since complaining to the phone company won't do any good. The manager will, however, have a lot of pull with them. Ask the manager how one makes a 10 minute call with one dime. What happens when the dime runs out? Call collect, and pay more? What do they have against calling from home phones back to pay phones? Don't people pay for home service? Dear YIPL, While on the phone with a friend, I heard clicks on the line. Then an operator came in and told me that there was another party trying to reach me and that it was an emergency. I heard the clicks a long time and when I asked her why she was listening in so long she told me she was trying to find out if my conversation was important enough to break into. And when I asked her her name, she hung up. -R I~, NY- Hot News Item! In issue 11 we stated that the Black Box is primarily for long-distance call , and that local calls may be disconnected if the switch is not immediately switched to "Free". Tests in several areas of New York show that local calls will not be disconnected and will be free. Calls from a pay phone will also be free. There are reports that certain areas will disconnect local calls automatically in 10 to 30 seconds, but often the phone is picked up and hung up too slowly, thus accounting for the disconnection. If the procedure is done within 1/2 second, no disconnection will, occur, unless the local phone system is so designed. Highest safety will be afforded when calls are kept under 3 minutes. A recent rumor flying around Washington was that there was a number, 560-9944, that made a rising siren tone with a click if your phone was tapped, and no click meant no tap. NBC anchorman John Chancellor called the number and heard a click, so he called the phone company. They told him they disconnected it because people were making too many calls to it - falsely thinking that it told of phone taps. An army intelligence source told the N. Y. Post that there was a similar number in N. Y. , but he didn't know it. If he had read YIPL #14, however, he would have, 324-0707. This number, to our knowledge, was not a bug detector. It is a test number that swept through the frequencies of the long-distance circuits. When it reaches 2600, there is a momentary click because test men using it long-distance don't want to be causing extra switching when checking a line. Also filters in all, long-distance trunks would cause the loss of the tone at 2600 anyway. The Telecommand (YIPL #3) detects a tone sent down a line and silently answers the phone. If you suspect a Telecommand on your phone, and were to feed a rising siren tone into your phone, you would hear a click when the frequency of the Telecommand was reached, and the click would mean that the Telecommand had just turned on. Since the chance of a Telecommand being on your phone is small compared to the many more common taps, using the phone company's sweep tone could prove to very misleading, at the very least. Since the rumors began, both the Washington and N. Y. numbers have become busy signals. So it appears that a common test number useful for one limited type of bug detection and no others has bitten the dust. Dear YIPL Here's a way to beat the high cost of living. 1. Steal an adjustable price marker from a supermarket. It has about 5 wheels, that turn to whatever price you want. 2. Go to your local hobby shop and buy a small tube of Methyl Ethyl Ketone, "MEK", a resin catalyst You are now ready to fight dat ole debbil inflation. You've got your pricer, your MEK, and some paper tissue. Now go to the store. Stick to canned foods at first. Find what you want. Put a drop of MEK on the price. Wait a second, then wipe it off with your paper tissue. Select the price you want (between 10 and 25 cents less than the store price) on your pricer, and stamp away. If they question the price at the checkout, get abusive. Call them money grubbing bloodsuckers and threaten to call the price commission. They will not bother you again. Bon appetite and good luck. -Stainless, R. L THE CHEESE BOX The Cheese Box is simply a conference line, or loop-around. They are very popular with bookies who place bets by phone, because their clients call one number, and the bookie calls another, and police won't find the bookie at the location of either of the two numbers. This is precisely why loops have been a favorite of phone phreaks, too. Bell's loops are limited because they often disconnect after a certain time, one of the two numbers must be called first, and they are often monitored and sometimes even charged. The Cheese Box can be extended to many lines, thereby creating conferences, and will let either line be called first and hang on indefinitely. Last but certainly not least, the Cheese Box is free. Phone voltage is normally 45 volts. When the phone rings, a 90 volt AC signal is applied to the line. The zener diode conducts if the voltage rises to 56 volts, thus it conducts as the phone begins to ring, in fact, before the phone rings. As soon as it conducpts, the phone equiptnent thinks you picked up (because current is drawn by the zener) and the voltage drops below the zener voltage, and it stops conducting. All this happens so quickly that essentially the zener conducts for only a few milliseconds, and the billing equipment does not start. If you call from a local-pay phone, you will get your dime back. And you can hold on until someone calls in on the other line -or lines. When they do, their line will be answered in the same way and you can then talk to each other. The capacitors prevent the DC voltages on the lines from interfering with each other. Either side of the line can affect the line status if allowed to touch another line. Install the zener diode to the red and green wires of your phone line. If you install it backwards, there will be no dial tone on your phone, if so, reverse the wires from the zener. A zener diode will conduct electricity when the anode is more positive than the cathode, or when the cathode is more than a certain number of volts more positive than the anode, in this case 56 volts. Since the phone company has a special hatred for phone attachments that cause free calls, many bookies use the Cheese Box for only a few minutes, since calls over 3 minutes can be detected if the phone company decides to do something about it. Hi, Here are some good references on switching systems: Bell laboratories record San. 70 page 13 Bell System Technical Tournal Nov. 60 page 1381 This one is the best paper on the Bell switching system and pages 1398, 1400, and 1422 will give you a good understanding of how the toll system works. Page 1422 explains supervision principles. Supervision is returned to the caller when the called party answers. As a result you get billed. If you disconnect (2600) on a toll call after supervision has been returned to you, you will be timed out by your local office. That is, you will lose the circuit in 15-30 seconds. If you are not souped, then disconnecting with 2600 does not cause time out. On what calls are you unsouped? If you call a phone that has a black box or mute, a call to information, service calls, or recorded messages . The phone company does not return supervision on 555-1212 so you will not be charged. Thus only the first billing entry is made. If you MF off of long distance information and call a supervised number, the start and stop of conversation will be recorded. That is, you will be billed for a call to information which is IMPOSSIBLE as supervision isn't returned on those calls. You went from an unsupervised line to a supervised line during the same call which is a dead giveaway that you used a blue box. If the phone company is alert you will be nailed when they check their billing tapes. Never use long distance information from a home phone. Your security should never depend on someone else's stupidity. Here are the credit cards for two of those companies producing 2600 detectors. You are cordially invited to the 2nd annual Phone Phreak's Convention BE SURE AND BRING AN ISSUE OF YIPL ADDRESSED TO YOU FOR FREE CONVENTION ADMISSION. Northeast Electronics Concord,N.H. 224-6511-004U (603 Area) Teltronics Lakeland, Fla. 683-7409-531Z(813 Area) It's reasonable to assume that these people will only supply independent companies. The Bell system has designed its - own. It's been known for some time that Bell has had a fe~ 2600 detectors that recorded the MF numbers. These are probably used when they suspect a blue box is being used from a home phone and want to gather evidence for prosecution. According to Bell security, the computer program which processes the billing tapes now looks for 800 calls longer that 10 minutes as well as an excessive number of 800 calls. -Alex, U.S. - YIPL To get the phone to ring in Denver, dial 6191, then hang up. It will ring one long continuous ring until you pick it up. The 660 thing suggested in #18 doesn't work. Question- what is the point of driving the Nashville info. ops crazy, as suggested by one of the letters in #18? They are ust as oppressed by Pa Bell as the rest of us, and certainly ot responsible for the way we are ripped-off. I think its important to remember that the phone co's lackeys are poor and starving like us, probably hate the phone co. as much as we do, and also are being exploited by it. They aren't the enemy, and I'm sure they have enough problems (like maintaining their sanity in a job like that) without being unneccesarily hassled. end of diatribe -Nancy, Denver

[HaBi 1]    YIPL No. 20 - July 1973