Phreak Crash Course

Introduction
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So you wanna be a phreak? Phreaking has declined in popularity in the past years due to ESS, but is no less phun or interesting. It is safer then hacking,IMHO, because noone knows what a phreak is outside of the "underground" computer community. You can do many phun things phreaking like bother the operator at no risk to you, make free long-distance phone calls to japan, and other cool stuff. First, I will teach a crash course on electricity and electrical components, then a course on soldering and how to build a beige box.


Electricity
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There are 3 main concepts in electricity, the volt, the amp, and the ohm.

Volts are, simply put, a measurement of how bad electricity wants to get from one place to another. For example, 1 volt won't even arc, but the few thousand volts on a stun gun will arc a few inches. 

Amps are the number of electrons are going through the wire. Ohms is the difference in the incoming and outgoing amps. 

Resisters and speakers are measured in ohms. There are also 2 types of electricity: AC and DC. AC goes back and forth from positive and negative, like what comes from a wall outlet. This makes it especially useful but dangerous, because it inducts, or puts itself, into nearby coils of wire. DC just goes in a straight line, like power from a battery. this makes it easy to work with, and is most often used for electrical projects.

Here is a description of the most important electrical components:

1. The diode. A diode only lets current flow in one way,but not the other. One use is to turn AC (alternating current) into pulses of DC.

2. The resistor. A resistor reduces voltage and current, to protect delicate components from strong signals.

3. The capacitor. A capacitor stores and releases electricity, somewhat similar to a battery. There are a few differences, though. A battery provides for a slow release of electricity, wheras a capacitor can release all at once. A capacitor also charges up in a matter of milliseconds, and can store different voltages.

4. The transistor. A transistor is a device that can either be used as a switch or an amplifier. There are 3 wires coming from a transistor. 2 of them are input and output electricity, and the third is the "base", or the switch. When no voltage is applied to the base, no electricity goes from input to output. When voltage is applied to base, electricity flows from input to output. The output electricity also follows variations in the base voltage, acting as an amplifier for the base voltage.


How to solder
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First, get one of those cheap pen soldering irons for like $15 from somewhere like radio shack, good wire, wire strippers, and rosin core solder. Get a old kitchen sponge, wash it really good, and wet it. Ring it out good, and use it to wipe excess solder off of the tip of the iron. Get two old crappy plates or something (nothing that can burn or melt) and set the iron on one, and the sponge on another. Plug up the iron, leaving plenty of slack in the cord. Leave it plugged up for a few minutes. NEVER touch it after it has been plugged up, it gets like 300+ degrees farenheight. After you leave it plugged up for a while, unroll a little of the solder and "cut" off about a quarter inch with the iron. If it doesn't melt immediatly, leave it plugged up for a while longer. Do this every time when you begin to solder with that roll of solder for the first time that day. After that, cut off about four feet of the wire and cut it into 4 or 5 inch pieces. Strip out the ends of those pieces with the wire strippers, about a half inch. Get one of those, and solder the two exposed leads together. Touch the iron to the wires for about five seconds, unroll about 6 inches of the solder, and touch the tip of the piece of solder sticking out to the WIRES. Use just enough to cover the joint well. Don't touch it to the iron, this causes cold solder joints and can screw up circuits you are making. Repeat and make a chain of wires to practice soldering.


How to make a beige box
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You need a phone cord, a one piece phone, 2 big alligator clips, wire strippers that go to a small size, a lemon.

Get the phone cord and cut it in half, trim wire to about 2 feet or a little longer than a comfortable length you want. Strip it out. You should see 4 wires, red, green, black, yellow. Cut off the black and yellow wires, you don't need those. Strip out the red and green wires. You should see a bunch of little tiny wires stiching up. Twist the wires up from the red and green wires to make them as close to a single wire as you can. Wrap those around 2 short pieces of normal copper wire, stripped about a half inch on both sides,  and solder together. Make sure it is stable and won't come apart easily.

Then wrap the copper wire around the alligator clips, and solder. Again, make sure it won't come apart easily. Make sure none of the copper part of the red and green wires are touching each other. Plug this into the one piece phone. You now have a beige box. Late at night, at like 2 or 3 in the morning,get the lemon and go to someone's house and find the ugly green or gray box on the side of their house. Make sure it says telephone something or something like that. Get the lemon (you are supposed to get a 7/16" hex driver, but a lemon is easier and less suspicious.) Stick the lemon into the weird hex screwdriver slot, push in, and turn 1/8 of a turn counter clockwise.  You should now see 2 bolts, one red and one green. Attach the alligator clips to both of the bolts, red to red and green to green, respectively. You now should get a dial tone on the phone. If you don't, try building another beige box with the other side of the phone wire. You know what to do from here, make 1-900 calls, bother the operator, prank calls, etc. If you are really mad at someone, make a 1-900 call, get the phone girl, and leave. They will get like a $3000 phone bill.

-Bong incarnate