WEBVTT - Phone Phreaking: The Advent of Hacking 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:11.520 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:14.240 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.360 and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know. 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.520 That's right. Can can we can you do your little 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:24.800 trumpet sound announcement? Trumpet? 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:25.920 Yeah? Are you ready? 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:26.400 Huh? 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.040 Sorry? No, hold on. 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:39.159 There we go. Yeah, we want to announce the a 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.360 new writer that we have working with us, and welcome 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:48.680 aboard Kyle Hookstra and everybody. We have just classed up 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:53.479 this joint, Yeah, we have because Kyle is British and 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:56.800 he lives there. He's not like some some dumb British 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:01.160 dude living in you know, Waco, Texas, or. 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:03.480 Some American living in Great Britain. This guy is like 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.600 legit brit that's right. 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:09.560 He lives in Brighton and we gave him a test 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:11.759 article and this was it. He did such a good job. 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.800 We were like, hey, this thing's great and welcome aboard 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.319 and he was interested and so it seems like the 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:19.320 beginning of a new great relationship. 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.520 Yeah, agreed, So welcome aboard, Kyle, and thanks for this one. 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.720 I'm excited about this and this, Chuck, if you'll remember 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.640 came up from the whistling episode. Do you remember that? 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:34.360 Did you mention this? 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.600 I know one thing that Anna had turned up and 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.320 kind of included as a sidebar was how capt'n crunch 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.919 Whistle had been used to basically hack the phone system. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.640 And I've been wanting to do an episode on phae 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.720 freaking forever and it just so happened that reminded me, 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.000 And here we are now we ask Kyle to do it, 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.040 and this is our episode on phone freaking. 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:03.400 That you've been waiting for freaking ever to do. Yeah, yeah, 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:09.519 with a pH both ways. Actually, yeah, I mean, I 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:12.480 guess we should introduce what we're talking about here, because 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.600 this is something that if you're, oh, maybe have a 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:17.480 certain age, you might not know what this is. And 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:20.360 I'm of that certain age that should know, but I 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.240 didn't really know much about it, to be honest. But 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.720 we're talking about the fact that in the nineteen fifties, 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:30.359 well before that, let's. 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:36.400 Say you're not of that certain age, in. 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:40.200 Our lifetime, uh huh right, pre computers, Yeah, we were 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.240 all still connected via something called the telephone system. And 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.560 in the United States, the telephone system was It's how 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:49.959 humans connected before the Internet, and it was a big 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.400 interconnected system that was manually operated by switchboards, which we 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.480 should totally do a switchboard episode at some point. 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:58.400 Yeah, it was very really interesting. 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.120 But they started to get rid of the switchboard operators 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:07.480 in the nineteen fifties for automatic switches. And the one 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.440 thing they didn't think about was the fact that they 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.720 had a bit of a design flaw or a weakness 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:18.359 in this system, whereas the tones they use to let 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.239 the automatic system know like what to do with a 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:25.919 telephone call, could be mimicked and replicated with sometimes a 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:29.600 human voice, sometimes a toy whistle like you said, or 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.720 something that somebody made to essentially hack into the phone 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:38.120 system by replicating those tones. And AT and T was like, oh, 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:41.440 we never thought that anyone would be interested in doing that. 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:45.320 Yeah, that was an outstanding introduction man. 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.840 And it's called phone freaking phph Yeah. 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:53.720 And so phone freakers were pretty much the earliest examples 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:58.000 of hackers. They were free computer hacker culture. As a 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.480 matter of fact, hacking just grew essentially right out of 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.200 phone freaking and a lot of the phone freaks who 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:07.760 were kind of on the whole jam in the early 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:11.640 eighties just made the leap to computers through phones. It's 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.720 pretty interesting, as we'll see. But there's one thing we 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:19.880 should say about them as a community. Phone freakers were 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:25.560 curious individuals. Like they were technical minded types. They wanted 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:32.720 to see how this vast, huge connected network worked, and 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.599 they knew very well that there were whole, huge parts 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.080 of it that were shielded from public view. You weren't 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:39.719 meant to know about this. You didn't need to know 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:41.960 about it. Just go in and punch the phone number 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.600 and we'll connect it for you. That wasn't enough. They 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:46.600 wanted to know everything there was to know about it. 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.679 And one way that you can find out how something 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:51.880 works is to try to break it, and that was 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:53.720 kind of what they were doing. They weren't doing it 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:57.800 maliciously for almost exclusively, They weren't doing it maliciously. They 0:04:57.800 --> 0:04:59.560 were doing it out of curiosity. 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.320 Yeah, and it sort of reminded me a little bit 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.360 of like ham radio operators, where like the victory of 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.279 a like a win for a phone freaker was like, 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:16.440 oh my god, I connected with someone through the back 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.720 door in another country and was able to talk to them. 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.680 And yeah, maybe some people took advantage of like free 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.400 long distance and stuff like that. But like you said, 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.159 I think as a whole the community was just like 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:31.240 those were the wins, like, oh my god, I was 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:32.719 able to do this thing. How cool? 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.479 Right, So let's kind of start at the beginning, shall we, 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.680 because freaking did not exist prior to the fifties or 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:45.080 sixties when they introduced automatic switches. Which is a little 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.520 aside about the switches. The guy who invented him actually 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.760 invented him in the nineteenth century. He was a mortician 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:59.000 who his competition, the across town mortician rival. That guy's 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.720 wife was the operators, so when somebody called to ask 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.120 for a mortician, she automatically connected them to her husband's business, 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:07.600 not this guy's business. So he actually went out of 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.520 his way to invent an automatic switch to replace human operators, 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:15.080 and decades later they finally came into into play. But 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.440 you couldn't have done this before when somebody was like 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.880 connecting the call for you, because if you just started 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:23.880 whistling in their ear something like that, they'd be like, 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.560 what are you doing? This isn't this is really bizarre. 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.000 I'm not going to connect this call. It was once 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:31.360 it became automated that it became possible. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.200 Yeah, I mean, did they even have dial tones with 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:35.240 switchboard operators? 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:37.559 I don't believe, so, I don't see why you would. 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.680 I think when they converted to automatic switches, they adopted 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.239 something called multi frequency tones, and it was all where 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.160 you had a tone, like you pressed a one and 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.839 it made a certain tone actually a combination of tones, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.120 hence the multi frequency thing, and it told this this network, 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:58.840 turn this gear or this dial and everyone knows. I 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:00.480 don't know what I'm talking about with gear, but there 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:04.799 were gears involved, and things like actually would move somewhere 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.040 in space because a tone told it to. That's that's 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.600 kind of what they brought online in the fifties and sixties. 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.120 So if someone whistled at a switchboard operator, they would 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:15.200 be from the. 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:21.400 Future because so yeah kind of, or else they'd be fresh. 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.160 Yeah, they'd be fresh because they like a wolf whistle 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:24.560 or something. 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:24.920 Mm hm. 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.680 So let's talk about phones for a second, because when 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.600 we talk about these tones, we largely think of like 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:37.160 a push button telephone, which is what we use starting geez, 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:39.720 I'm not even really sure. But they replaced the rotary phones, 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.040 not replaced. They worked alongside for many years. We had 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.840 both for a long time in my house. Yeah, but 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.440 the button on the phone isn't exactly a key to 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.640 the system operating. The only thing the phone would do 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.760 was create that tone. The tone was what mattered. It 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:57.640 did get me wondering, like, well, how the heck does 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.800 the rotary phone even work? And this is just a 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:05.160 slight aside, but I never knew how that operated. And 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.160 the way a rotary phone would work was you would 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:11.360 dial the number around and that part didn't really matter. 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.800 It was the return back into position that sent this 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:20.720 that would engage basically these electrical contacts to interrupt the 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.680 electrical continuity. So a nine would go bup up, up, up, up, up, 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.600 up up up, and it would interrupt at nine different 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.880 times and sending a signal saying, hey, this is a nine, 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:33.640 dumb dumb. And I never knew how that worked, so 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.600 I thought that was pretty fascinating. But as far as 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:37.679 the push button phone, you would just press a button, 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:39.640 it would have a tone assigned to it. And it's 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:44.600 those tones that freaks were able to replicate to essentially 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.760 fool the phone company into thinking that somebody was pressing 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.240 a button, and in some case cases they were, which 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:52.400 we'll talk about and. 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:56.560 Just knowing that you could trick the system into dialing 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.800 something for you just by whistles or making tones, not 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.800 using your phone. That's fun in and of itself, but 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:06.480 there's a really good example of like how this could 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:09.440 be put to use in a way that was like, oh, okay, 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:13.400 this is no longer legal. You're actually you're you're you're 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.400 actually hijacking the phone system for your own ends, and 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.280 this is the basis of freaking. There was a there 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:23.480 was a tone that was instrumental to this whole multi 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:28.280 frequency tone system, and it was that I think the 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.000 minor e. It was that that resonates at twenty six 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:37.800 hundred hertz. Okay, so whatever sound cycles at twenty six 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:43.559 hundred cycles per second, that tone would tell the phone 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.959 company that your phone was on the hook. When when 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.360 your phone stopped making that sound, when your line stopped 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.760 making that twenty six hundred hertz sound, all of a sudden, 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.080 the phone system was like, oh, okay, this guy wants 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.440 a connection somewhere. Let's go pay attention to what's going 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.560 on here. So let's say you started dialing them, and 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:04.200 you dial the eight hundred number. Your phone stopped making 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:08.240 that twenty six hundred hurt sound, and the phone company's 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.120 attention was grabbed by that. And you dial this eight 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.280 hundred number and it would start to connect to you, 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.840 and because it was an eight hundred number, the system 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:18.839 would be like, Okay, we're connecting this, but we're not 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:20.839 going to charge this person for this call because this 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.640 is a toll free number. And then before the other 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:26.400 person on the other line could pick up, you would 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:29.200 blow that. You would make a twenty six hundred hurtz 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.319 tone and that told the phone system you had hung up, 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.240 but you hadn't actually hung up. And now the line 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.920 was open for you to dial any number you wanted 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.760 to anywhere in the world toll free, because as far 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.240 as the system was concerned, you were still calling a 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.840 toll free number even though you were calling any number 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.280 you wanted. And now you can make long distance phone 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:52.200 calls for free at a time when they were really 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:53.840 really expensive. 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.360 That's right. And these were enabled by what we're called 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.320 trunk lines. So if you think about whatever city you 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.720 live in, depending on the size of your city, you 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:04.880 would have I guess if you lived in a small 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.640 up town, you probably just had one office. But if 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.360 your city was large enough, you had multiple offices where 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.320 these calls were connected. Basically, so if you lived in 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.880 like one neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, and you were calling 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.920 a neighborhood, you know, ten fifteen miles away in Dallas, Texas, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.360 there would be another office there in that neighborhood or 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.800 that area or region or whatever, and they were all 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.280 connected by trunk lines, like hundreds to thousands of these things, 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:37.840 depending on how big your town was, because each one 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.360 of these could only handle one call at a time, 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.800 So the trunkline line was basically just a medium to 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.360 carry your vote, carry your voice locally from one place 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.040 to the other. And we both said there was only 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.080 one that could be going at once. That's why there 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.880 were thousands of these things. And if you were able 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.240 to replicate that tone, then you could, you know, have 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:01.200 some good, clean fun. 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:03.360 Yeah. And trunk lines were also the way that you 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.160 died long distance because they could connect like different parts 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.680 of a town. They could also connect one city to 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.800 another and so on and so forth. And so the 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.640 people who figured this out that you could you could 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.000 hijack the phone system by trying out different tones and 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.600 doing different things were just socked in immediately and just 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:26.760 began experimenting, started meeting one another, sometimes by happenstance on 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.360 a phone line that they just happened to try out 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.720 and there was some other freak hanging out on it. 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:38.319 It just was immediately infectious to their to their curiosity 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:40.080 that you just wanted to figure out how this could 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:42.360 work and what all you could make this phone system 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:44.040 do by replicating these tones. 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:46.880 I think that's a pretty good setup, my friend. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:49.720 I agree. You want to take a break, then, yeah, let's. 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.520 Take a break and we'll come back and talk about 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:54.960 who some of these first freakers were right after this, 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.000 all right, so we promised to talk about some early freakers. 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:27.920 One was a guy in the nineteen fifties, so you know, 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.000 this started pretty early on. If you think about early 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.520 hacking and like what led to hacking starting in the 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.920 nineteen fifties, it's pretty mind blowing. But one guy was 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.920 Joe and Grecia, and he was a blind man who 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.080 did not use a captain crunch whistle because that was 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.560 before they had captain crunch whistles. He whistled with his 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.920 mouth and was able to he had perfect pitch and 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.240 was able to emit somehow because it's not the easiest 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.319 tone to hit. And if you've ever heard it, series 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:02.400 that twenty six hundred hurts signal and he, you know, 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.400 he would whistle into the phone to do this. Other 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:08.880 people use, usually not their own human voice, but different things, 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.240 like I believe the Captain Crunch Cereal was in the 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.720 nineteen sixties. You can go on YouTube and see people 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.439 that have these little whistles demonstrating how it works and everything. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:20.720 But this was sort of the idea early in the 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:22.400 nineteen fifties and sixties with these. 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:27.360 People, right, So, I think the guy who came up 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.720 with the guy who's credited with figuring out the cap'n 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.080 Crunch serial whistle, it's like a boatswain's whistle like that, 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:38.920 you know that that whistle you know on Star Trek 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.320 when they blow the whistle to get everybody's attention. 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:42.880 I'd never seen Star Trek. 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:45.160 Well, anybody who's seen Star Trek, the original one knows 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:47.320 what we're talking about. That's a boatswain's whistle. And so 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:49.680 like the cap'n Crunch whistle would if you covered up 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:52.040 one hole, it would make a perfect twenty six hundred 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.600 hertz tone and Apparently the guy who came up with that, 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.200 who figured that out, took the handle Captain Crunch. That 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.080 was his freaker handle, but his real name was Draper. 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:05.320 Right, I believe cap'n Crunch. I saw it. 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:09.360 Both ways, really, yeah, I saw more often than not 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:14.320 captain like fully fully spelled out. I guess he was himself. 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:17.120 Yeah, oh okay, yeah, I thought you just were saying 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:17.800 it as a serial. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:20.280 No, no, no, that was his that was his handle. 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:23.479 No, no, no, I know, but he took it from the Cereal. 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:26.840 Sure, sure, yeah. I didn't think it was a coincidence. 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:29.200 What was his first name, Draper? 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:30.760 Uh? 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.120 Dave, Yeah, David Draper. 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.720 No, no, no, John John. I think it was John 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:39.520 because I watched videos of him and every time it 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.680 sounded like he was saying Don Draper for Madman. So 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:44.640 it was very confusing. 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:47.400 Okay, So so John he was the one who was 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.720 credited with figuring that out. He was a legendary early 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:52.560 phone freaker. 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.760 Yeah, and he still has videos and we'll talk about 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:59.400 a little bit more about him later on. But uh, 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:01.960 like I said, most people did not use their voice. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.480 They would use like that whistle or they started building devices. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.360 They were called blue boxes, and they all look different 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.560 because they were all homemade. But you know, if you 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:15.040 look up blue box online, there are all kinds of 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:19.880 you know, it basically looks like a a phone without 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:24.160 the talking ends. It's just like a box, usually with 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.640 punch button numbers like you would see on a phone. 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:31.960 Yes, or if if you were a Bond villain in 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.960 maybe a sixties Bond movie, Yeah, and you wanted to 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.280 remotely blow something up, it looks like the kind of 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.960 thing you'd pull an antenna out of, impress a series 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.960 of numbers on it, and something would explode, and then 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:49.760 you'd very calmly put the antenna back in and walk away. Yeah, 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.440 except scratch the antenna right, Not in the blue box, 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.440 just in this Bond idea. Yeah, there's also a red box. 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.040 There are a ton of different boxes. Like by the 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:01.720 end of all this, people had figured out all sorts 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.800 of different devices to make phones do all sorts of things, 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:09.119 and they all had different colors. But the other, the 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.040 other two big ones where the red box, which was 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:16.240 a blue box but had the added capacity of creating 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.480 the tones that told the phone system that this payphone 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.440 had just accepted a quarter or a dime at the time, 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:24.760 and now you can go ahead and connect the call 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:27.399 even though no one had put a dime in. It 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.400 had just mimicked that tone. Then the black box made 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:35.399 it interrupted like the DC signal to your phone, to 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.920 make it seem like you had never picked up a call, 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.280 so the person calling you long distance would never be 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:42.760 charged for it even though you're sitting there talking. Those 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.040 are the three big ones, Blue, red, and black. 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.199 Yeah, and the red one is actually super cool because 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.800 you know, if you came along after payphones were around, 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.040 you didn't have to put in like if you had 0:17:56.080 --> 0:18:00.199 other coins that would equal a dime. Let's say, oh, 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:02.800 I don't know two nickels. Sure, you could put two 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.919 nickels in, and a nickel created a specific tone, a 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.440 dime created a specific tone, and a quarter created one. 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.000 So the red box was able to mimic each of 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:16.320 these coins to recreate the tone it made when you 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.320 you know, because those little paper ones were smart. They 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:20.520 they knew what you were dropping in there. They were 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.040 so smart, and they would sing that song lussly. 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:27.159 So the whole thing that all these were based on, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:33.920 again was this multi frequency tone system. And it turns 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.359 out that there were six master tones to the whole 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.680 thing that if you knew these tones, you could basically 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:42.439 make the phone system do anything you wanted. And they 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.680 were made up of twelve individual tones, and so, for example, 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.920 if you wanted to mimic the number one, you had 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.320 to make the sound of seven hundred hertz and nine 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.199 hundred herts at the same time, and that would be 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:57.560 as far as the phone system is concerned. If it 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:00.239 heard that, it would say, oh, okay, one, I mean, 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.160 I'm pressing one for this guy. And the whole thing 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:08.680 is predicated on a mistake that somebody made at Bell, 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:10.639 which we haven't said this, but this is kind of 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.560 important too. At the time AT and T was known 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.080 as mob Bell, it had essentially a monopoly on the 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:20.119 phone system in. 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:23.159 The United States, exactly like it. 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.280 Was the phone company for the entire country. And because 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.600 it was so this one big monstrous thing, if you 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:32.639 figured out how to mess with AT and T, you 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.199 figured out how to hijack the entire phone system. That 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.000 was one thing. But the point of that is that 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.919 some AT and T engineer wrote an article in a 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:46.080 technical journal in the fifties and they included what those 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:49.480 master tones were made of. In the article, and that 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:52.720 gave way to the basis of all those blue boxes 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:55.200 and black boxes and red boxes that were made later. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.400 Had that article never been published, freaking might have never 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.399 really taken off. It would probably been a pastime for 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:05.040 people with who had a captain crunch whistle or perfect 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:07.840 pitch and could whistle things themselves. 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.480 I don't know. I bet you nerds prevail. 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:15.400 For sure, but I mean it would have taken those 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.040 like hardcore people like Joe and Grecia who figured it 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.000 out on their own, just in trial and error over years. 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:26.200 This was here's here's a blue box, and here's how 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:28.639 you use it. And that's how a lot of people 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.600 got into freaking who wouldn't wouldn't have otherwise been pulled 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:33.480 into it because it would have been too hard. 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.119 I think it's sped up the timeline for sure, for sure. 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:39.760 And like we said, people were, you know, the win 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:43.080 was making a call working around the phone company for 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.280 a long distance call. Sometimes they would get into pranking 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:48.959 a little bit, like they could figure out how to 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.760 hack into the the loud speakers at a mall and 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:56.800 make announcements. That was one pretty famous prank call in 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.960 Santa Barbara in nineteen seventy four when they they had 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:05.120 they basically took advantage of a bug called simultaneous seizure, 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:08.200 where two calls at the same time would jam ups 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.080 the switching equipment in the office and you could hijack 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.160 calls coming into like a city. So people two guys 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.440 got you know, from La Got. I guess they got 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.880 arrested for doing this, it says they. I'm not sure 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:25.640 if they served jail time or not, but they essentially 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.040 were able to any call coming into Santa Barbara. They 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.080 would route it to a voice saying that Santa Barbara 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:36.040 had been destroyed by a nuclear bomb, and it kind 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.600 of got out of a hand, like people called emergency services, 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.720 and you know, they found out what was going on, obviously, 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.679 but just you know, sort of that was about as 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.120 harmful as it got, unless you count stealing long distance. 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.880 Yeah, and stealing long distance was a favorite of the mafia. 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.240 They were a big time into phone freaking, and they 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:58.600 weren't the kind who would just sit there and you know, 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:01.440 try out whistling different tones for years on end. They 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.359 got into it through blue and black and red boxes. 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:07.439 And the reason why is because their bookies would be 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.080 taking calls from all over the country. And I think 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:13.040 I said earlier that that long distance was expensive at 0:22:13.040 --> 0:22:18.560 the time, it was so expensive. Click Americana, which is 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:21.520