Landline

The public telephone network has evolved over the decades from manually switched wires carrying analog-encoded voice to an electrically switched, computer-controlled grid of wires, fiber optics, and radio carrying digitally encoded voice and other data.

Owning a landline telephone switch is nothing new. It s just that not many people have the skills to do it anymore. And that s why The Don can charge top dollar for his services, often with repeat customers. Phone phreaking (that is, hacks and exploration of telephone systems) never really died, it has just been overshadowed by high-speed Internet connections and wireless networks. But if you look closely, it s still here.

Probably the most well-known exploits of phreaking were done by Kevin Poulsen in the mid-1980s. Kevin had access to many of California s Pacific Bell switches and routinely tapped lines and rerouted calls. And, there were the radio station contest grand prizes he won from KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, where famous DJ Rick Dees gave away Porsches to the 102nd caller during his morning show. Kevin used a clever trick that would guarantee his win every time.

Poulsen hacked into the Pacific Bell switch that controlled the subscriber lines for the radio station. Once the switch was compromised, Poulsen added the call forwarding feature to 520-KIIS, which was the first line, or pilot number, of a hunt group, a group of numbers with a leading pilot number. When the pilot is dialed , the call hunts in sequence through the hunt group to find the first vacant, non-busy line and is connected. Kevin then forwarded the pilot to a number at his hideout; therefore, all calls into the pilot number would be forwarded to Kevin. Next, Kevin call forwarded his number to the second line in the hunt group, effectively creating a path between the pilot number, Poulsen s hideout, and second line of the hunt group. Poulsen had several other phone lines at his location in order to call into the radio station once the contest was announced.

Once Rick Dees started the Porsche giveaway, he announced each incoming caller number over the air as thousands dialed in. As the caller number neared 102, Poulsen deactivated the call forwarding from his line to the second line in the hunt group, and took his phone off the hook. This caused any legitimate caller who dialed 520-KIIS to be greeted with a busy signal, as they were being forwarded to Poulsen s off-the-hook phone.

Kevin and his associates starting calling the second line in the hunt group to guarantee that they would be the only callers into the radio station. After he won, Kevin simply removed call forwarding from the radio station s pilot number and things were back to normal. All it took was access to the phone switch and a desire for a brand-new , shiny red Porsche.

What it comes down to is that people implicitly trust the phone system. Once you gain access to the switch, the rest is like taking candy from a baby. It doesn t take much to convince someone to use the phone if they think their e-mail or network is being monitored . Most people would rather give their credit card number to a stranger over the phone than they would through a secure Web site. It really doesn t matter either way; there are risks inherent in both.

Wiretapping has been around since the invention of the telephone. If the Feds can listen in on calls, so can other people, especially determined hackers. And especially The Don. Newer technologies, like Voice Over IP, can make snooping (and denial-of-service) that much easier. The switching systems also keep track of line usage, calling patterns, and customer billing in accounting logs. Most people don t care about that data, but it s there for the taking.

For all the organized crime members who hop from payphone to payphone to handle their business, there are hundreds more who talk on the phone as if they re in the Cone of Silence. If they only knew.