Secrets of the Little Blue Box? - Hak5 2423

Hak5 -- Cyber Security Education, Inspiration, News & Community since 2005:
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Editor: Perrin M
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Founded in 2005, Hak5's mission is to advance the InfoSec industry. We do this through our award winning educational podcasts, leading pentest gear, and inclusive community – where all hackers belong.

[cheifthumbs]

I built and used a blue box in 1976 to make free phone calls to my folks in a foreign country. DTMF pad a tone generator and a pair of alligator clips. I never used the speaker. It was a matter of unscrewing the cover on the mouth piece and connecting the clips to the wires. Better connection that way and it made the whole thing rapidly concealable. Phone Phreakers freely passed around lists of trunk lines to access to route your calls through the various exchanges. I had access to internal phone company books that mapped the whole system worldwide. I later built a blue box that produced those trunking tones as well as the various tones to match coin drop. It all worked great on the old analog systems. I went to work for Bell Canada in 1979 and helped develop and deploy the digital system used and updated massively since. I've installed digital telephone systems on every continent except Antarctica.

[LiveOverflow]

I love the history deep-dive. Anecdotes about the old times are so great. Especially when you can look at them in the modern context and connect the dots that were not obvious back then :3

[Darkn]

There used to be a paperback(essentially a printout) called Catch 22 it referenced a "Black Box". If I recall correctly it allowed you to receive LD calls on a POTS line by manipulating the voltage. Since ring voltage is higher by switching on the box the phone system would not start toll charges as it would think the call was still ringing. This again is something I read over 20 years ago. It was definitely referred to as the black box.

[joejamescat]

Thank you Darren. I enjoyed this podcast because of the old school references. I can relate.

[FarrellMcGovern]

BBSing in 1994? Wow, you came in late! I put up my first BBS in 1985, on Fidonet, & later, Magicknet/PODSnet and had already been on BBSs for at least a couple of years before that.

Ahh...memories....

[GeoffreyFeldmanMA]

I think it was "Blue" because AT&T was but the actual boxes were whatever the project box actually was. Sometimes black, sometimes aluminum - whatever. It was not a product. It was something you built. Mine was gray.

[hitch]

You might be able to go to a place like "Coas" used book store for that documentation.

[kristanrodrigues]

Hey Darren. Are we going to see some more lessons and tutorials with the Hack5 team again? You and Shannon perhaps giving tutorials on various tools or exploits or vulnerabilities

[MidnightCoup]

I think people use 'BAD USB' as analogous to the type of attack, rather than the name of the attack, E.G. MITM, Evil AP..etc

[philipm]

Hak5 im glad yee do what yee do, good info thanks

[cantrell]

Yeah but rubber ducky has been around for ever just not known as rubber ducky. I was using kye injections back in the 90s

[ariffzkfly]

I dont want to buy other bad usb but hak5 dont deliver to singapore, thats really sad. Wish you guys reply to my enquiry on shipping to Singapore one day. I wonder why you cant deliver to all countries instead.

[mikehensley]

the paperback copy of the Anarchist Cook i saw when i was younger said written by Jolly Roger. * i think *

[tatiana]

yayyy rubber duckies please come back to Merritt with the tutorial for bangNull!

[pepemunic]

Darren, when are u going to come to Argentina :(

[n_Cn]

I see the pot plant is gone. Lmao
I was just playin the other day bro