The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998

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The Fixer Presents Colored Boxes a 1998 Review File 1 of 4 Intro, Line Voltage Tricks Intro There are a lot of text files and pictures of various boxes making the rounds today, but most of them are now *really* old. Some never worked at all, some are obsolete, and a dwindling few still do work - but they are abused or misused by a majority of those who try them. Most disturbing of all is the amount of discussion that still takes place on boxes that should rightfully have been forgotten many years ago. The purpose of this series is to debunk most of the boxes mentioned in newsgroups and text files, and to clear the air on the true usefulness of those that remain. Without regurgitating any of the textfiles that describe these boxes, I will briefly describe how each one is supposed to work, how or even if it actually does, and why or why not. If I can prevent even ONE person from blowing money at Radio Shack when he doesn't have to, if I can convince even ONE person to spend a few bucks at Radio Shack instead of wasting hours out of his lifetime building a simple line gadget, if I can prevent ONE would-be phreaker from getting arrested, then this series will have served its purpose. NOTE: Although there is a section for "boxes" that are nothing more than jokes or parodies, there are a good deal more boxes out there that present themselves as the real thing but are so stupidly implausible that they might as well be hoaxes. I have included these frauds in the proper sections for what they claim to do. Families of Boxes o Line Voltage Tricks (File 1) o Wiretaps, Bugs, and Lineman's Handsets (File 2) o Legal Line Gadgets (File 2) o Tone Generators (File 3) o Bridges, Cheese and Gold Box (File 3) o Others, Non-Phreak Boxes (File 4) o Jokes and Parodies (File 4) .---------------------------------------------------------------. | Line Voltage Tricks | `---------------------------------------------------------------' Aqua Box aka Gray Box, aka DIFT Box (Cancels line voltage to defeat so-called "lock-in trace") The Aqua/Gray box is supposed to defeat the "FBI Lock-in Trace" by canceling the voltage that the FBI device is supposed to put on the line to keep it open. There are a few things wrong with the concept of the "lock in trace" right off the bat. For starters, if the FBI can keep the voltage up on your line, they already have your number, so why continue? And if their purpose is to trace a call made to you (and to prevent you from hanging up before they can complete the trace) then it's not you who the Aqua box would save. Second, the files which describe the process say that if you hang up while the lock in trace is in effect, your phone will ring due to the voltage the tracing device places on the line. But, a line is held open with a DC voltage, and ringing uses AC. So this is obviously wrong. Third, with digital switches pretty much the norm everywhere, this kind of analog "trace" is no longer necessary. IF you should ever figure out that the FBI has had you traced, it's already done no matter what you do to your line. If the Aqua Box ever worked, it is now a thing of the past. The Gray Box is an Aqua Box with a 2-line selector switch added. The Gray Box text file is considerably more technically detailed than the Aqua Box file but it plagiarizes a large piece of it verbatim. The Silver Box (DTMF Generator) has sometimes been called a Gray Box, but it has nothing to do with the Aqua Box or the Lock In Trace. Plausibility: I find this only marginally plausible. If the Lock In Trace was ever really used, then the number of people who have sucessfully beaten it with a box and escaped capture longer than a day could probably be counted on one hand. Obsolescence: Completely obsolete. Phone switches are digital. People have Caller ID. Traces use the same core technology now. Even older ESS switches use ANI to trace. Skill: Advanced electronics skills needed. If this box is real, you will need to be well aware of normal line voltages to even tell if there's a trace in progress, let alone do something about it. Risks: There is probably a low risk of getting in trouble for using the Aqua Box, but if you need it you're already caught for something way bigger anyway. Black Box (Defeats old-fashioned toll billing on incoming calls) The Black Box was once quite common. It used a line voltage manipulation trick to allow people to call you toll-free. The way it worked was that when someone called you through an old-fashioned toll switch, the connection was already set up right to your phone. The box let you pick up the phone and talk through this connection while fooling the system into believing that the phone is still ringing. Black Boxing became obsolete when electronic switching - not even digital mind you, but ESS, EAX and hybrid switches - were introduced on a wide scale. It actually died in a lot of places well before that as telephone companies wised up to Black Boxing in the 1960s and 1970s and started checking logs and setting up exception flags (2 hours of ringing is NOT a normal occurrence...). In a toll network, if the receiving end switch is electromechanical AND there are no countermeasures, AND the toll network passes audio before billing starts, black boxing will work. There are virtually no such switches left in North America, and the toll network doesn't pass audio until the called party picks up, so Black Boxing is long dead here. I have, however, heard tell of some rural European and third-world phone systems where all the conditions are right for black boxes even today, but because of the North American toll system, we couldn't call such a number for free from here. At least not usefully anyway. Plausibility: 100 percent real. Obsolescence: Totally obsolete in North America, varies in other parts of the world. Skill: A little electronics knowledge was needed to build one, operation was a matter of throwing a "Free/Norm" switch. Risks: If you CAN black box, you probably live in a banana republic somewhere where the penalty is publicly having your hand chopped off. On the other hand, those same countries are not exactly famous for the efficiency of their telecom fraud investigators. Magenta Box (Portable Ringing Voltage Generator) The original Magenta Box is a British design, but easily adapted for the U.S. electronic parts market. It basically uses a relay as a vibrator (get your mind out of the gutter) to generate pulsed DC, which can then be fed into a transformer and stepped up to approximate the AC ringing voltage, making any phones attached to it ring. The plans are technically sound and the device WILL work if properly constructed, but the authors don't tell you what it's useful for. Most people, reading the Magenta Box file, will think, "Wow, I can prank someone with that." and then forget about the Magenta Box forever. But if you want to hack into a system and never be traced, not even to a payphone, the only way to do it is to Beige Box a direct connection to one of its dialup lines. The phone company would then have no record of a call. You would need to trigger the modem's answer circuit to connect this way though, and for that you would get the best results with a Magenta Box (ringback numbers can have unwanted tones, recordings, connections to a logging system, etc). So not only do I consider this box plausible, it's woefully underrated! Plausibility: Real, but underrated. Obsolescence: Still current. Skill: Not a difficult project but it shouldn't be your first. Risks: In every practical use there is for this device, you would have to be clipped to your target's phone line, usually from outside at the junction box. This is prowling and trespassing and looks damn suspicious. Static Box (Remove line noise, make your own Lock-In Trace) This box claims that line noise is the result of poorly regulated DC voltage on the line. The problem with that, of course, is that any effort you make to regulate the phone company's DC voltage is going to severely distort the audio. But that's not the worst of it. The file claims you can eliminate the noise by connecting a 9 volt battery. All this will do, of course, is make the battery get very hot as the phone line, whose DC voltage is higher than 9 volts, tries to charge the battery. It may even catch fire or explode! And you won't notice *any* sound quality improvement. But it gets even lamer still! The file then goes on to suggest that you can just raise the voltage to the same voltage as the line, and *boom* you have an instant lock-in, where the person on the other end cannot hang up, just like the FBI! Even under crossbar or step by step, this is bullshit. And besides, have you ever hung up on someone who called you, and then picked up and found they were still there? That's how the system works anyway, so of course the authors of the textfile claim their box works! Plausibility: Very infeasible and implausible. Obsolescence: N/A. Skill: N/A. Risks: Playing with directly connecting batteries to your phone line will only get the phone company pissed off at you. Violet Box (prevents payphones from cutting you off when your time is up) The Violet Box apparently works in Australia. The file is a bit vague, but what I can decipher from it is this: In Australia, when your three minutes or whatever on a payphone are up, the phone itself cuts you off, unless you first put in more money. The Violet Box is a 470 ohm resistor across the payphone's line - I guess payphones in Australia don't have much physical security for their lines. Anyway the resistor holds open the connection after the phone cuts off. After a few seconds, the phone comes back to life and you can talk for a few more minutes. Plausibility: If that's how payphones work in Australia, then this is a perfectly believable box. Obsolescence: I imagine the Australians will sooner than later phase out these phones, which seem to be pretty mickeymaus to me. Skill: Depends on how secure, how high up, etc the physical access point to the line is. Risks: The text file says that sure, you could just bud/beige box from the access point, but the point of the Violet Box is to avoid the risk of being caught bud boxing. However there's still a risk of being spotted installing the resistor, and of removing it again when you're done.