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New Boxes For Captain Crunch 146

Posted by timothy from the not-soggy-in-milk dept.
Logic Bomb, standing in for a crowd of submittors, writes: "The New York Times has an interesting profile (free reg req) of John T. Draper, a long-time phreaker and hacker. He's had quite a career, but is probably best known for figuring out that a freebie toy whistle from a cereal box generated the right tone to make free calls at pay phones. It's an entertaining read." As sachsmachin puts it, "Crunch is apparently trying to redeem his blue-box-filled past by working as a white-hat hacker in the Web security industry -- his company, "ShopIP," does OpenBSD-based firewalls." Draper is also well-known for writing the first word processor for the IBM PC, (EasyWriter) among other things.
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New Boxes For Captain Crunch More

New Boxes For Captain Crunch

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  • Just A Reminder (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Back in the days before the Internet, the only network available to 'play' with was the phone network... Since AT&T had just spent so much time and money bragging about thier new 'in band signaling network' which used the same wires that the voice signals crossed to control the switches... man, talk about just _asking_ for it! Just remember that the next time some router vendor trys to sell you an MPLS switch!

    Of course, some folks just can't help put want to put thier hand on the hot stove...

  • Thanks! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Thanks for bringing this problem to our attention!

    I forwarded this to our server operations department. It should be fixed (disabled) soon.

    Sincerely,
    NYT Customer Service

  • Does anyone remember... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    when Captain Crunch used to be Donkey Kong Cereal? That was good shit.

  • Humourous aside.. (Score:5)

    by Stormie ( 708 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:39AM (#473653) Homepage

    In 1971, John Draper taught Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak how to make blue boxes. They sold them door-to-door on the Berkeley campus.

    Decades later, Jobs brings Apple back from the brink of despair by.. selling computers with coloured boxes!

  • From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.

    You can also dial by interupting the 2600Hz at 10Hz. The digit 3 is 3 interruptions just like the old direct current dial pulsing. That's the old timey way. It's far easier to build a couple oscillators and a switch to cause them to play particular tones together than to build a dial pulsing circuit that works correctly, unless you can cannibalize an old rotary phone. Since you only have about 10 sec to dial your number, you have to be right and fast. It's really tough to dial a 10-13 digit number that quickly. A zero takes a second to dial at 10 interruptions per second. Many of those and you might not finish your number. The MF tone pulser wins hands down on speed dialing and automation. Hence, it's the phreaker's choice.

    As for the security being appalling, remember this system evolved over time. The first 2600 Hz oscillators used tubes, inductors and capacitors. They were often stabilized with light bulbs connected in the circuit as positive temperature coefficient thermistors. Some were probably still in service in the early 80's.
  • This was also known as in-band signaling because the signaling tone was in the voice band (200 Hz to 3400 Hz). It is used to interface microwave based FDM (Frequency Domain Multiplexing) systems to PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) systems. The presence of the 2600 Hz tone signifies "on hook". Thus, dial pulsing was represented by 10 pulse per second interruptions of the tone and ringing was represented by 20 pulse per second interruptions of the tone. In essence, all the foreign exchange subscriber (FXS) and foreign exchange office (FXO) signaling functions were implemented with the tone. If the tone were sent *before* the called party picked up, that signified a WATS line call, a free call.

    This caused a Friday afternoon crisis. We bought all the Captain Crunch we could find, since not all the whistles would emit a tone close enough to 2600Hz to activate the detector. We had to increase the selectivity of the LC filters by increasing their Q and increase the voice path cut delay.

    Even after doing this, some people could inadvertently "talk-down" the connection. Women with mousy voices and old men who whistled through their teeth as they talked could knock down the connection. "Talk-down" happens when you send the 2600 Hz tone during the conversation, an inherent problem with this signaling scheme.
  • 1) no@no.no
    2) setup a hotmail account if you actually need to have a password sent to you.

    Sure...I get tons of spam at my seldom looked at hotmail account, but I could probably setup a brand new one and get the same amount of spam.
  • I met John Draper at an Audio Engineering Society convention in 1981. He was talking to the guys from Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) about Forth. Turns out he was a friend of Chris Hanley, who went on to buy A&R Studios in NYC, so we hung out for awhile and I visited him in Berkeley (maybe Oakland?). Strange guy, but he was basically responsible for my switch from hardware to software, and for that I thank him still and wish him well.

  • Re:cereal (Score:3)

    by bjb ( 3050 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:37AM (#473658) Homepage Journal
    No, they are.. they're changing the cereal box to a BLUE BOX..

    yuk yuk yuk
    --

  • On another note, draper loves to goto raves and give kids E so that hey can show them "how to release their enegry". If you don't belive me, goto just about any rave in CA and watch what he does.

    Sick man.

    -miah
  • How would the world of networking have been different if the world's most popular personal computer inn the early 1980s had shipped with a modem?

    Nope, it was even more subversive than that.. A computer-controlled bluebox.. Imagine having a easy-to-use, software programmable interface to control the phone system?

    Your Working Boy,
  • Personally, some of my best programming has been done after long and careful consideration of what I was about to do. Sometimes brilliant solutions occur in a flash, and for my the most common times for this are:
    • Explaining the problem to someone else.
    • On a long car trip (commuting to work used to provide ample design time).
    • In the shower in the morning.
    Whereas those times when I've pounded away at a problem in front of a computer for hours on end tend to give solutions that work, but I'd hardly call them elegant or robust...
  • Mr Crunch is a shady character, and one I wouldn't trust with my Internet security. He's a complete joke to almost everyone in the scene, and most people consider him a pedophile. He was kicked out of several private parties at the last Defcon, and was generally ridiculed the whole weekend. Why does he get such harsh treatment from the scene? It's likely caused by the fact that he's much older (and looks the part) than almost any one else (with the exception of the outright insane 'Happy Hacker' Carolyn Meinel), and he acts like a cross of a hermit from a Monty Python sketch and grampa from The Simpsons. I'm not sure what the point of this post is. But it's probably something to the effect of: he won't get supported by the scene on his zany security endeavors because he's got no cred. Or something. I dunno.
  • Because they want an email address, and allot of people don't like giving any company a email unless they are sure it isn't going to be sold and then spamed to hell and back. I'm appriciate the fact that he put the link on. Otherwise I wouldn't have even botherd to read the article or read through the discussion.
  • Man, this makes me sick. You guys out on the west coast get to have all the fun!
  • True, but wasn't it Draper who
    figured out that it could be done with
    cheap whistles?

  • cereal (Score:4)

    by DarkClown ( 7673 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:35AM (#473666) Homepage
    I was immediately concerned that the actual captain on the cereal box was going to change when reading the subject. Further reading revealed no such trauma.

  • Don't forget the blind kids ,,, (Score:5)

    by AftanGustur ( 7715 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:59AM (#473667) Homepage


    It wasn't "Captain Crunch" who figured out that you could make free calls with the whistle that came with the 'Captain Crunch' cereal.

    Although he did claim it in the beginning, he admitted the truth after beeing called a lot of bad names for taking the credit from a group of blind kids that discovered this.

    Today, he openly admitts, it were the blind kids, who figured it out, but has completely forgotten about that he tryed to credit himself with the discovery.

    You can read about it here [webcrunchers.com]


    --
    Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?


  • A problem (Score:2, Interesting)

    Perfect example of why the Slashdot moderation system sucks.

    D.


  • I mean, it was definitely a reference to Draper, and it sure seemed like foreshadowing, but it was never mentioned again

    So you were expecting it to be mentioned again...

    That's one of the things I like about Neal Stephenson - he doesn't pander to the pathetic "spoon-feed me the plot in bite-size chunks 'cause I'm too fucking stupid to understand it otherwise" wishy washy dumbfuck audience. He throws pointless shit into his stories for no apparent reason.

    Anyone who watched the film Ronin and expected Sean Bean's character to return later in the film on the side of the bad guys will know exactly what I mean.


    D.


  • You're right, in that Markoff is not well-regarded in hacker circles.

    The specific gripe with him is that he stepped over the line from being a pure reporter. He demonised Mitnick to a massive extent, raising his profile and indirectly leading to the Feds/Govt. deciding to make an example out of him.

    In the wider scheme of things, he's simply part of the whole set-up that ended up with a guy spending four years behind bars without bail and without trial. At the end of the day, that's just plain wrong. I'm not even going to bother going into the dirty details of the rules that were broken during the actual investigation and arrest, nor the figures for damages that various companies quoted, which were straightforward lies.

    Basically, there are a hundred Kevin Mitnicks out there who never got caught and thrown in jail without bail or trial simply because they never had the exposure he did.

    There's a large element of "There but for the grace of God go I...", I reckon.

    For an alternative to Markoff's Takedown, try reading Jonathan Littman's The Fugitive Game.


    D.


  • Look, if some loser managers won't accept Free Software, that's their problem. I'm sitting in the offices of one of the world's Top 5 investment banks right now. These guys' preferred webserver is Apache and they use Tomcat for running servlets and JSPs. Instead of NT fileservers, they use Samba, and I've just been helping someone get GNU plotutils installed for use on a mission-critical system.

    The only reason they're not installing Linux servers is because Sun hardware is better than PC.

    I don't care about the clueless people. Let them run Windows. The important parts of the world already accept Free Software.


    D.


  • any relation to Marx? Not to say that linux isn't better than windows, or nt rules, what have you.... but that line could have been part of a communist geek manifesto.

    You think so? I thought it was quite right-wing and elitist myself. 'Let them eat cake'-type of thing... Anyway, Marx wasn't a Communist. He was a Socialist. Subtle, but important difference.

    and i'm SURE your homepage is REALLY 2600.com.... sure it is.

    Ah, confirmation of Stupidity.


    D.

  • Re:No, Mod it Down! (Score:3)

    by The Dodger ( 10689 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:53AM (#473673) Homepage

    Remember, those cluless people get elected to congress

    Yeah, by YOU!

    D.

  • Yeah, it figures that fuck Markoff would write favorably about that pervert. I've never met Crunch, but I know hacks that have...and who were invited back to his room for a little massage. Very young hacks. Ick.
  • username: dotslash
    passwd: slashdot

    Have fun...
    --
    Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org [hackerheaven.org] will!
  • NYTimes.com has had my e-mail address since 1994 (and, yes, I have had the same e-mail that long...), and I have never once recieved spam from them or anyone identified as a 'partner' or anything. The spam I do get is so low grade (university diplomas and home morgages and the like), that I'm 99% sure that NYTimes had nothing to do with it.
    --
  • I crossed paths with him several times in the
    late 70s and 80s at Apple/mac users' groups.
    Seemed to be a reasonable guy with a few
    eccentricies.

  • It's a bad practace and shouldn't be encuraged.
    Is there any real danger than NY times will do anything evil with it? No

    The notion that a website should ask that you sign in is something I'd like to discurage...

    Slashdot you gotta sign in to post... not thats not even true.. you can post annon.. you sign in to give yourself an identity...
    Ok I can see an account to add content.. but not to simply read it..

    I don't like where this is headed and I'll fight it kicking and screamming if I have to...

    When ever I folow a link and it asks for a password... I don't bother...

    I'm non-fond of the partners back door... NY times should fix that... I'm not gona use it..
    If they really want my visits they can let me read it like a normal website...
  • I used to hang out with him when he lived in Berkeley, then Alameda. Learned a lot about the Mac in the later days; he had one of the first commercial uses for vblanking code (I'm not doing Mac stuff any more; I hope that's what it's called).

    He's a very intense and smart guy. Crazy too, but in a good way. I'd consider buying one of his firewalls if I needed one.
  • Having met John on several occasions, and had lengthy security discussions with him, it seems that this technical savvy expired after writing EasyWriter. This guy did do a lot for the "scene" back in the day, but he's simply outclassed in today's security business. The company is riding on a name. Would you hire Eric Corely to secure your network? Of course not. He's got a name known to the media, but that's about it. Unless the company has some technical people, its merely riding on a name that's 30 years out of date... $.02
  • Anyone notice this thread is being over moderated? There are/were a ton of posts about alleged child molestation, etc. Having seen this man in action, I hate to say it, but these people do have a valid point. Is slashdot afraid of a Libel Lawsuit against them? There's probably hundreds of people that could testify with first knowledge on this. This man is not eccentric. He's got a problem which people overlook because at one point, he did something that people thought was cool.
  • That was sarcasm...

    Like saying a system with a default root password is secure, until someone finds it.
  • Not really. It's like leaving the door unlocked, but using a different type of key.

    The 2600Hz tone dropped you to a trunk, basically. From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.

    So all you'd end up doing if you whistled 2600 would be to drop the call. Only if you had a custom-made tone dialer, or (in later years) a PC, could you do anything.

    The whole in-band signalling was a hack, to save them from having to reimplement a bunch of stuff. It tacked onto the existing system with a minimum of effort and was completely secure. Until someone found out what the tones were...

  • Cool. I didn't know you could 'pulse dial' with it.

    Thanks.
  • "Whether black hats can become white hats is not a black-and-white question"

    I thought that was EXACTLY the kind of question it was! :)
  • It is also widely accepted in hacker-lore that the person who is Captain Crunch could whistle a perfectly pitched 2600 [2600.com] Hz. without the use of any devices.
  • I've met Crunch on several occasions, and done energy work with him. It's applied reflexology, and there's nothing sexual about it. I do not believe any of these silly pedophilia accusations.
  • These are 'live' concerns. Here in NoVa there are quite a few execs, and newspaper reporters, who read slashdot. This concern is one that many people in the industry have. Good post and good responses. These security concerns are ones we need to address. Many suits think that open source is less secure. Or, at least, that there is less opportunity to sue a vendor if a security flaw exposes vital data. Of course, the effects of UCITA needs to be explained to the suits. But WITHOUT flames. For the effect of flames on suits, and reporters, ask Jerry Pournelle why he (and many others) gave up on reporting on Apple.
  • Remember, those cluless people get elected to congress, and donate money to campaigns, and accept money for their campaigns. But, yeah, clueless people like that can't harm us, it's their problem, so we shouldn't listen to what they have to say. After all, the DMCA only targets criminal hackers, right? At least according to many of those same "clueless" people.
  • Ahhh, but that's the point, people like you and I don't elect the cluless to congress. The people who vote, and know nothing about true hacking, elect them. If you and I can't take the time to inform the clueless, clueless they will remain. To out detriment. Not theirs.
  • You need to be away from the machine and think out your code before you start in on it, and sometimes it helps to get a hardcopy and review the code on paper when you're debugging. "
    I don't know that you need to get away from the machine to think out your code before you start; I usually make my initial notes in emacs, rather than paper and pencil.

    For debugging, though, I agree; there's nothing like hardcopy and a big conference table on which to spread it.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • I remember hearing about him many years ago where he showed a bunch of kids how to do "Crunch-Ups". Sounded pretty perverted if you ask me.
  • > My A500 is STILL faster than a 486Dx66.

    And it's still BETTER (design-wise) than an Athlon 700.
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
  • So what exactly are you implying here? All I see in that photograph is a man sitting in front of a computer talking to some teenagers. From that we are supposed to deduce that Draper is some kind of wacko? That's a serious accusation to make without any evidence to back it up.

    I don't know Draper myself. Never heard of him before today. Maybe he is what you say. Maybe he is not. But from where I sit, your post looks to be nothing more than a smear campaign.
  • Oh. Well, maybe it's just as well that I don't know the guy.
  • John is an interesting character. Talks continuously. He stayed at my apartment for a couple days once (int the apple ][ days) and I finally figured out how to shut him up, for two whole minutes:

    I showed him something about a phone he didn't already know. B-)
  • This is a very humorous and interesting read. Check it out:
    http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/story.html [webcrunchers.com]
  • I ran into him at a couple of raves in SoCal in '97 when he was living at the Loft... but he had disappeared soon after Dune III...

    I had always thought he was an urban legend until I discovered he was hanging out in the rave scene ;)

    -marsh
  • Sometimes I just wonder if we would be able to save 50million /. users 30s each typing out 'partners', and a few dozen writing posts like the above and moderators' time in giving them points, if the editors who approve the posts could spend 30s changing the link themselves? Hell, they always have time to tag on a witty comment after the post anyway!


    ---
  • Why would there be no background checks on a programmer just because he is writing Open-Source code? Open or Closed, I would assume it is in the best interests of an Internet security company to audit both their code and their programmers...in fact, the fact that the code is OS just means it can easily be audited externally...
  • He wasn't the guy that actually figured out the whistle thing. He asserts that some of his blind friends that were into phreaking with him showed him that if you glued 2 of the holes closed that the whistle emits a perfect 2600 hertz. The whistle trick was discovered after the invention of the blue box.

    John Draper is a very intelligent individual. I remember when he was starting his company up, we used to chat about security protocols and the like. Also a point of interest is that he did a lot of toying with radio as well. Also Easy Writer was written in FORTH... it takes a real hacker to program in FORTH. C is a toy by comparison (in some respects). Anyway, Kudos to the cap'n for being featured on slashdot in a good way.
  • Isn't the article author, John Markoff, surrounded by controversy regarding Kevin Mitnick? I seem somehow recalling that Mr. Markoff engaged in a betrayal... it seems like so long ago. I can't remember the details, but there are those I know who turn up their noses at the mention of his name, muttering that this guy hosed Mitnick pretty ruthlessly.. Regards, Eric
  • I have an in-box pre-ordered PC (when I bought it the tape hadn't even been removed), complete with the manuals, disks, and little advertising plugs for upcoming software. One of them is a little black on light blue order form so you can order DisplayWrite when it becomes available. I think the date quoted was April or May, but I'm not really sure. Oh, an interesting note; On the invoice, MSDOS cost a grand total of $41.59, CP/M was nearly $300. Adjust that for inflation!!
  • I thought the same thing! haha!

  • John Markoff (the author of this Times article) paired up with Tsutomu Shimomura to write the book "Takedown" [amazon.com] about the original capture of Kevin Mitnick. He also co-wrote "Cyberpunk : Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier" [amazon.com] with Katie Hafner.
  • Your apples are all infected now.
  • I could go around and say the world was made of cheese and no one would believe me.

    Why?

    Because of all the different things that exist in the world.

    No matter how hard I would try I could not limit the discussion to the sentence the world is made of cheese.

    Now with source code? HA! No see now we have a magic bullet.

    I let people make changes to my code. I have a million blind men try to tell me what this elephant of a decision will do to my code.

    What code on which machine in what room do I allow who in which part of my business to do what to in what way to what extent?

    It's the difference between saying you're open to possibilities and saying you will walk naked in the street.
  • Anyone who's ever eaten Captain Crunch knows about the thousands of razor cuts the stuff leaves on the roof of the mouth. Count Chocula's much better...

    So Captain Crunch is designing BSD firewalls eh? 5 gets you 10 they're invulnerable to everything... except a whistle at 2600 hz...

  • >Anyone know what ever happened to the blind guy who could whistle a perfect 2600 tone? I think he was simply called Joe the Whistler, but I may be mistaken...

    are you sure you're not thinking about Sneakers [imdb.com] ?

  • You Sir, are an idiot.

    It is people like you who are forcing "crackers" to continue with their illegal activities. They have got to earn a living to pay their rent and put food on their table, and the back side of security is what they know best.

    Now think for a while, where would you like to have a "cracker": in a computer security job, under constant scrutiny and surveillance, or out in the wild, working for, say, organized crime instead?

    And BTW, Draper wasnt a cracker but a phreaker.

    /Dervak

  • You dont seem to understand. Crunch was a phreaker, not a cracker. That means that he hacked the phone system, not computers. So why should he be barred from working with computers? It is a different field.

    So you dont want to work with him? Fine, it is your right. But do not place onerous restraints on people who do not deserve them.

    And BTW, WRT what you said, what happens to a bad politician? Answer: He gets to be president, even if more than 50% of the people voting opposed him.

    /Dervak

  • ... when his firewall becomes open source.

    According to the article, I inferred this:
    1) He can't hold a job
    2) He can't handle money (so much for support)
    3) He's very clever, but doesn't care. I'd always have a nagging suspicion of intentional backdoors.

  • Permanent no-login links (Score:5)

    by Kreeblah ( 95092 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @05:13AM (#473713)
    You can bypass all the reg-required NY Times links if you notice that channel.nytimes.com has all the stories, but without the login prompts. Next, notice that channel.nytimes.com has a different IP address than www.nytimes.com and nytimes.com. Do a DNS lookup on channel.nytimes.com and add it to your hosts file, something like this:

    208.48.26.223 www.nytimes.com
    208.48.26.223 nytimes.com

    There. No more reg links. channel.nytimes.com gives you a directory listing for the root directory, however, so you don't get a flashy intro page. But if you use their page at www.nytimes.com, you probably have an account there anyway.
  • Same here. And my first thought was "this REALLY is news for nerds and stuff that matters."

  • Debugging - a lost art ? (Score:3)

    by dingbat_hp ( 98241 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @06:10AM (#473715) Homepage

    Is code quality worse now that people are used to just sitting down and hacking it out?

    Yes, much worse.

    Debugging is done by the quickest and dirtiest method. It always has been, that's just human (and geek) nature. The difference is that In The Olden Days, it was so slow to do the compile, run, test cycle that you would make damn sure the program couldn't possibly go wrong first -- simply through laziness. It was easier to know about things like loop invariants, because it was so damned painful to compile anything. If a bug showed up, it was because you'd made a mistake (despite trying) - it wasn't just a case of "run it and see what falls out".

    These days, pressing the button is quick and easy. If it compiles, throws something on the screen, and doesn't let the magic smoke out immediately, then it's "finished" (I'm telling you kid, it ain't). Very few people have any idea of whether their code is really bug-free or not, simply that it has shown no obvious bugs as yet. This is a very scary quality standard.


  • I think that the New York Times needs to realize that people are going to circumvent their registration methods no matter what they do. If they finally perfect it to where we are forced to fool around with registration, people will just stop using their service. There are other news organizations out there that readily give away this information.

    Why am I going to fool around when I can more easily get it from somewhere else?
  • Some of my best solutions occure when

    • When I goto bed, but just before I get to sleep
    • When I give up and go for a smoke (Not going to be everyones cup of tea, natch)
    • When I get really stuck, I goto the loal pub and read a newspaper or something. The solution usually comes to me on the walk back after a couple of pints ;)
    Everyone has their own ways of walking away and re-examining a problem though. :)

  • Some Questions (Score:4)

    by _outcat_ ( 111636 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:54AM (#473718) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    It was an ideal situation," he said. "It forced me to get off the computer and think and debug my program."

    I had a computer science prof who just couldn't seem to emphasize this enough--"don't just sit down at the computer and start coding away. It'll be a nightmare. You need to be away from the machine and think out your code before you start in on it, and sometimes it helps to get a hardcopy and review the code on paper when you're debugging. "

    In this age, though, all the up-and-coming programmers, the college kids and such, have had no experience with programming that required a LOT more effort and thought--such as punch cards, time-limited use of a mainframe, etc. They sit down at their $400 eMachines and bang out some Java. Is there anyone here who can comment on this? Is code quality worse now that people are used to just sitting down and hacking it out?

    Also--in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"--even I know a good deal of that movie was exaggeration and pretty flashy things, but blue boxes WERE shown--what did a blue box look like?
    Any URLs?

    I'm honestly asking this stuff here. Thanks.

  • More information on the man (Score:3)

    by Rurik ( 113882 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:41AM (#473719)
    Discovery Online has John Draper in their Hall of Fame [discovery.com]. Gives some general information about him.

    There's more information about him, EasyWriter, and his work at WebCrunchers [webcrunchers.com].
  • From the NYT:

    Shortly after leaving prison, Mr. Draper was hired by Apple Computer, at a time when the company had only 15 employees. He developed a telephone-dialing card for the original Apple II computer. But Apple never marketed it for fear that it could be used as a powerful computer-controlled blue box.

    Now that's a product that could have shaken the industry, at least in hindsight. How would the world of networking have been different if the world's most popular personal computer inn the early 1980s had shipped with a modem? Would we already have universal broadband by now? :)

  • So.., who the hell would submit their code with a backdoor????

    That would be the height of stupidity.

    I dont think the OpenBSD folks audit every single installations code every 6 months :P

    Jeremy

  • Why bother pandering to paranoids who think the NYT is out to steal their souls (or even worse, their bandwidth). If you're that bothered, get a Hotmail account, or Bigfoot, or any other freeby mailbox.

    You never get something for nothing. In this case, you get free news (instead of having to pay however much each day) in exchange for your user demographics and an email address - that's the deal, take it or leave it. If you want to leave it, then don't bitch that you can't get free news.

    Grab.
  • what did a blue box look like?

    It varied, because they were home built. Generally, someone would buy a general purpose box from a retailer or mailorder (such as Newark Electronics). The ones I saw were all black, maybe 6" x 4" IIRC, or no box at all just a breadboard.

    This was in L. A. contemporaneous with the Jobs/Wozniak stuff, although AFAIK I never saw one of those.
  • Actually, your thinking about one of the blind kids he knew that actually clued him in to the whole whistle thing in the first place.
  • And don't tell me the code would be checked, because most code isn't checked at all,never mind sufficient to uncover something like this.

    Doesn't openBSD do line-by-line security audits every six months? If they do, any backdoors would certainly be caught.
    IIRC, BSD does an audit on any patches sent to them, they haven't had a remotely exploitable problem in over three years.
    Just my two cents.
  • You poor child. You must realise that a person's actions in the world are measured by their success, not how many or what they screw.


    Geek Culture killed my dog/
    and I don't think it's fair...
  • ... that we as a culture (a Geek Culture [geekculture.com], of course.) should demand Cap'n Crunch as an ikon, worthy of veneration - that is, unless there are ikonoklasts in the /. world. Man... the things you come up with half an hour out of bed .

    (I mis-spelled "icon" on purpose, BTW, to distinguish between the thing you click on, and the thing you worship. "Ikon" is from the Greek of the similar spelling (iota-kappa-omikron-nu), and denotes a thing worthy of worship. See Greek and Byzantine history for more.)

    Geek Culture killed my dog/
    and I don't think it's fair...
  • Why the fuck can't you people just register an account? I takes like 30 seconds! And if you allow the damn cookie you'll never have to type the password in again. Sheesh, are you people really that paranoid? I mean you have to logon to slashdot to post under your username and retrive settings....

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • Well, assumedly, the source could be diffed against the current source tree, or against whatever version he clamied to be using. Assuming that we trust the OpenBSD team we would only need to validate the changes to the code, not the whole thing, in fact, given that OpenBSD is already being used as a firewall would probably mean that no real new code would need to be added.

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • Also--in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"--even I know a good deal of that movie was exaggeration and pretty flashy things, but blue boxes WERE shown--what did a blue box look like? Any URLs?

    Hrm... they were blue :P

    Actually, there ended up being hundreds of [color]boxes, back in the day, I once found instructions for making just about all of them. Of course, most of the cool ones wouldn't work anymore (more advanced, hack-proof phone system).

    A blue box doesn't really have a 'look' to it anymore then a radio or an answering machine does. It just needs to be able to plug into phone network (or make the tones in the air, in front of the receiver, which is much cooler in my mind).

    this page [navyrelics.com] has some pictures, one of Capt'n crunch holding a small device up to a phone... hrm, according to this goggle search it's still possible to blue box in Chile

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D


  • Capt'n crunch could tell any tone by ear to a few Hz (as many people can, apperantly), but I havn't heard anything about him being able to whisle that freqency. If he could, why would he ever need the whisle? There was one blind kid who could whisle any tone, however.

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D
  • the NYT *is* free! you just have to register!

    Amber Yuan 2k A.D

  • Re: Some Questions (Score:4)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {25melle}> on Monday January 29, 2001 @05:27AM (#473733) Homepage Journal
    --I have left work with my laptop in tow, gotten on the LIRR, gone home to Ronkonkoma and come straight back to "figure things out."

    --When deadlines get too close for comfort my manager now insists I get on the train. They are *seriously* considering getting me a train seat for my office.


    ---
  • I've actually got a NYTimes account, but I know many many people here are:
    • Busy people who haven't got time to register an account
    • Sensitive about privacy issues
    • Forgetful about their own login details
    • Just want to read the article without jumping thorugh hoops and registering.

    Richy C.
  • You might find some more useful information in this list of Phreak URLs [beebware.com] - the alt.phreaking FAQ will help shed some light on who was 'Cap'n Crunch' and other 'lore' phreakers. If you can't whistle at 2600Hz, nor get hold of a suitable whistle, have a look for the link to 'Reorder Tones'....
    Richy C.
  • Looking at his biography [takedown.com] doesn't show much (unless you recognise the title of his book - Takedown), an interview with Salon Magazine [salonmag.com] reveals a bit more. But once you've read the front page of Takedown.com [takedown.com] you find out that John Markoff did have a hand in arresting/tracing Kevin Mitnick. Oh, as well as book it's also a film [beebware.com]
    Richy C.

  • No reg. link (Score:5)

    by beebware ( 149208 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:34AM (#473737) Homepage
    Here's the no login link [nytimes.com] to http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/technology/ 29CAP.html [nytimes.com].
    Richy C.

  • Re:2600 (Score:5)

    by beebware ( 149208 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:38AM (#473738) Homepage
    You're correct - the US telephone companies used a signal at 2600Hz to switch customer lines onto the telephone 'trunk'. More information can be found in Chapter 5 [slackworks.com] of 'The Phreakers Manual' as well as the details of the legendary blue box [signaltonoise.net]
    Richy C.
  • Do what I did, so you never have to check this again:

    /etc/hosts:

    # Get around NY Times registration
    #
    208.48.26.223 www.nytimes.com

    Matt
  • I'd rather have a hacker working on setting up my computer than a white-collar MSCE. When you learn something on your own, you usually understand it better than when it's taught to you. And someone who knows how to exploit something will also know how to better protect against it.


    --------------------

  • 2600 (Score:5)

    by CarrotLord ( 161788 ) <don.richarde@NOSpAm.gmail.com> on Monday January 29, 2001 @04:32AM (#473741) Journal
    I believe that this is where the significance of 2600 came from -- the whistle was at 2600 Hz....

    rr

  • Very cool story! Even though "Easy Writer" is a minor sub-point to the article, I actually used it! Many, Many, Many years ago... I think it ranked up there with my copy of Desqview and Norton Editor. Cool.

  • I'm guessing 8086 assembler.

    This from one of many computer timeline sites (http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/pcinfo/hardware/com phist/comp1980.htm [bton.ac.uk]):

    IBM announces the IBM 5150 PC Personal Computer, in New York. The PC features a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 CPU, 64 KB RAM, 40 KB ROM, one 5.25-inch floppy drive (160 KB capacity), and PC-DOS 1.0 (Microsoft's MS-DOS), for about US$3000. Also included is Microsoft BASIC, VisiCalc, UCSD Pascal, CP/M-86, and Easywriter 1.0. A fully loaded version with color graphics costs US$6000.

  • NYT Login:

    User: &nbsp Slashdot2000
    Pass: &nbsp Slashdot2000


    "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

  • So, in other words, this person who at least was a criminal is now starting a business, using his reputation for doing shady things as his resume. Don't get me wrong, I am more or less a dualist when it comes to the old time "hacker" mentality that existed before the Linux explosion, but I think that part of the reason OSS doesn't get taken as seriously as it should is because a large part of the community tries to justify the activities of a group that is motivated towards crime.

    At any rate, I am happy to see that this talented individual is using his talents in a positive way, and I hope he succeeds in this endeavor.

    What does everyone else think? Is the "hacker" image of the OSS community hurting it?

  • He developed a telephone-dialing card for the original Apple II computer. But Apple never marketed it for fear that it could be used as a powerful computer-controlled blue box.


    Probably wasn't a modem, just reading what you put here, sounds more like a tone generator.


    Hehe, the most popular (home) computer in the early 80s did have a modem, the Commodore 64.
    -

  • "During the day, he recalled, he would write the code. Then, at night, after returning to jail, he would study the paper list of programming commands, looking for errors. "It was an ideal situation," he said. "It forced me to get off the computer and think and debug my program."

    Gotta admit its one hell of a way to increase productivity. I can just see some evil project manager chuckling with glee and reaching for the number of the nearest jail....

    Jon

  • Sounds like the guy's had a hard time. He's been to prison paid his debt to society, good luck to him. Obviously it's nothing more than a guess, but I'd say he's (probably) not going to stick backdoors into his clients firewalls.
  • It wasn't Donkey Kong cereal, they were put out by different [quakeroats.com] companies [gamecenter.com].

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