What Is Phone Phreaking?

Phreaking is a term used to describe the studying and experimenting with phone systems by a new subculture of people. Most of these people are "hackers" as they do this research in order to manipulate the system whether it be to gain access to files or to gain an advantage over their phone provider.

While the precise origins of "Phone Phreaking" are unknown, many point to the deployment of automatic long distance switches in phones by AT&T during the 1950's as a possible starting point for this revolution. Once the automatic switches were installed, users were able to manipulate the system using different tones such as 2600 Hertz. This tone would cause the switch to think the call was over, allowing a user to exploit the system for free long distance and international calling. This tone was discovered by a 7 year old blind boy named Joe Engressia. Engressia realized that by whistling a certain way he could turn off the dialed phone recording. Engressia's discovery uncovered two things; the fact that people could manipulate single frequency phone lines and that people with a stronger sense of hearing like those who are blind, can more easily manipulate these single frequency lines. Similar ploys by "Bill for New York" (who used a recording of a 2600 hertz tone) and John Draper, a close friend of Engressia's, who used a whistle given away in Cap'n Crunch boxes, earning him the moniker of "Cap'n Crunch" throughout the Phreaking community.

Sprint Phones

Bell Systems opened a new can of worms in 1964, when they released a manual describing the methods used to crack their multi-frequency systems. Meant to be only seen by their engineers, the manuals found their way to various college campuses across the United States, essentially releasing all the intricacies of cracking a multi-frequency Bell System (AT&T) calling system.

Following the release of this information, two Phone Phreaking "clans" sprung up, one on the east coast and one on the west. This second generation of Phone Phreakers explored and experimented as teams, allowing them to surpass their predecessors' solo approach and the forthcoming results. The East coast group, known as Group Bell, consisted of three men; "Evan Doorbell, "Ben Decibel", and Neil R. Bell. Evan, the leader of the group, recorded many of their results, distributing them via the internet, print, and word of mouth. Much like their colleagues on the east coast, the Mark Bernay Society, stationed in California and led by none other than Mark Bernay, experimented and published many results breaking down the barriers of Bell Systems devices and codes. Mark, along with his brother Chris and a man known as "Alan from Canada", continuously cracked codes throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's, publishing all of their results on a website designed by Mark called "Phone Trips".

In their October 1971 issue, Esquire Magazine described early Phone Phreaking, highlighting in particular Engressia and Draper. This article gave Phreaking a global audience, attracting former Phreakers such as Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer. After the Esquire article, Phone Phreaking publications such as Youth International Party Line (1971) and Technology Assistance Program(1773) sprung up, combining with Bernay's blog to give international audiences and Phreakers places to explore and share their Phreaking ideas and opinions.

With the dawn of Modem internet and the personal computer, Phone Phreaking and Computer Hacking combined to create mayhem for phone companies. Up and coming companies, such as Sprint, at their founding, did not have the ability to connect callers directly over long distances. This inability forced them to use a system in which a user would call a local station, type in a six or seven digit, then be connected long distance. Using a computer hacking program, Phone Phreakers could quickly guess different codes to make long distance calls on another user's card. Using the knowledge that there were ten thousand Sprint users, Phreakers could guess a six digit code every one hundred tries, while getting a seven digit code within a thousand tries. Once guessed, a code would be spread throughout the Phone Phreaker community, basically making the code unusable by the legitimate owner. Sprint could do very little about the problem, as they would need the local phone histories for every calling area. This was basically impossible, and even if they did have access to these records, it would be expensive both monetarily and time wise. This problem ran rampant for many years before Sprint, along with other up and coming companies eliminated the need for a calling card, making long distant calls direct.

The end of Phone Phreaking came as multi-frequency phone lines were eliminated and with the birth of cell phones. The last multi-frequency phone line was eliminated in Washington in 2005. With the inception of cell phones came the ability for people to make long distance calls with a standard rate. So, with direct calling from one phone to another, Phone Phreakers basically lost all chances to use someone else's bill using hacking technology to make calls.

So, Phone Phreaking, beginning in the 1950's with Joe Engressia's stumbling upon the problem with 2600 hertz calling, has evolved over the years along with new technologies and companies. Along with this evolution has come new breeds of Phreakers, from Cap'n Crunch using a simple whistle, to Phiber Optik (real name Mark Abene) a forerunner in code hacking for long distance calling. These problems stemming from Phreaking have slowly been eliminated, yet as technology advances in the telecommunication world, you'd expect Phone Phreaking to evolve with it.

What Is Phone Phreaking?