The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/zines/n_z/narc04.txt

Text File | 2003-06-11 | 7.3 KB | 125 lines

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ESS is the big brother of the Bell family.  Its very name strikes fear and
apprehension into the hearts of most phreakers, and for a very good reason.
ESS (Electronic Switching System) knows the full story on every telephone
hooked into it.  While it may be parano id to say that all phreaking will come
to a screeching halt under ESS, It's certainly realistic to admit that any
phreak whose central office turns to ESS will have to be a lot more careful.
here's why.

With Electronic Switching, every single digit dialed is recorded.  This
is useful not only for nailing phreaks but for settling billing disputes.  In
the past, there has been no easy way for the phone company to show you what
numbers you dialed locally.  If you protested long enough and loud enough,
they might have put a pen register on your line to record everthing and
prove it to you.  Under ESS, the actual printout (which will be dug out of a
vault somewhere if needed) shows every last digit dialed.
Every 800 call, every call to directory assistance, repair service, the
operator, every rendition of the 1812 overture, everything!  Here is an
example of a typical printout, which shows time of connect, length of
connect, and number called.

          DATE  TIME  LENGTH UNITS  NUMBER

          0403  1517     3   1      296-6820
          0403  1523     5   3      567-3211
          0403  1600     1   0      921-1044
          0403  1610     1   0      800-555-1212
          0403  1612     10  2.35*  716-221-3184
          0403  1629     1   0      000-000-0000
          (TSPS)

A thousand calls to "800" will show up as just that--a thousand calls to
"800"!  Every touch tone or pulse is kept track of and for most phreaks,
this in itself won't be very pretty.

A traffic engineer did an exhaustive study of all 800 calls over the
past few years, and reached the following conclusions:

1) Legit made calls to 800 numbers last an average of 3 minutes or less.
   of the illegal (I.E.Phreakers) calls made via 800 lines,more than 80%
   lasted 5 minutes or longer.
2) The average residential telephone subscriber makes five such calls to an
   800 number per month.  Whenever phreakers are being watched, that
   number was significantly higher.  As a result of this study, one feature of
   ESS is a daily log called the "800 Exceptional calling report." (As
   Prometheus spoke of in NARC #3)

Under ESS, one simply does not place a 2600 hz tone on the line, unless of
course, they want a telco security representative and a policeman at their
woor within a hour!  The new generics of ESS (the #5) now in production, with
an operating prototype allow the system to silently detect all "FOREIGN"
tones not available on the customer's phone. You have exactly 12 buttons
on your touch-tone phone. ESS knows what they are, and you had best not
sound any other tones on the line, since the new #5 is programmed to
silently notify a human being in the central office, while continuing with
your call as though nothing were wrong! Someone will just punch a few keys on
their terminal, and the whole story will be right in front of them, and
printed out for action by the security representatives as needed.

Tracing of calls for whatever reason (abusive calls, fraud calls, etc.) is
done by merely asking the computer right from a terminal in the security
department.  With ESS, everything is right up front, nothing hidden or
concealed in electromechanical frames, etc.  It's merely a software program.
And a program designed for ease in operation by the phone company.. Call
tracing has become very sophisticated and immediate.  There's no more running
in the frames and looking for long periods of time.  ROM Chips in computers
work fast, and that is what ESS is all about.

Phone phreaks are not the only reason for ESS, but it was one very important
one.  The first and foremost reason for ESS is to provide the phone company
with better control on billing and equipment records, faster handling of
calls (I.E. Less equipment tied up in the off ice at any one time), & to help
agencies such as the FBI keep better account of who was calling who from
where,etc.  When the FBI finds out that someone whose calls they want to trace
is on an ESS exchange, they are thrilled because it's so much easier for them
to trace it.

The United States won't be 100% ESS until sometime in the mid 1990's.  But
in real practice, all phone offices in almost every city are getting some of
the most basic modifications brought about by ESS.  "911" service is an ESS
function.  So is ANI (Automatic Number Identification) on long distance calls.
"dial tone first" pay phones are also an ESS function.  None of these things
were available prior to ESS. The amount of pure fraud calling via bogus credit
card, third number billing, etc. On Bell's lines led to the decision to
rapidly install the ANI, for example, even if the rest of the ESS was several
years away in some cases.

Depending on how you choose to look at the whole concept of ESS, it can be
either one of the most advantageous innovations of all time or one of the
scariest.  The system is good for consumers in that it can take a lot of
activity and do lots of things that older systems could never do.  Features
such as direct dialing overseas, call forwarding (both of which open up new
worlds of phreaking which we'll discuss in future issues) and call holding are
steps forward, without question.  But at the same time, what do all of the
nasty implications mentioned further back mean to the average person on the
sidewalk?  The system is perfectly capable of monitoring anyone, not just
phone phreaks!  What would happen if the nice friendly government we have
somehow got overthrown and a mean nasty one took its place?  With ESS, they
wouldn't have to do too much work, just come up with some new software. Imagine
a phone system that could tell authorities how many calls you placed
to certain types of people  I.E. Blacks communists, laundromat service
employees... ESS could do it, if so programmed.

                       (C)opyright 1989 N.A.R.C.
                      You can reach NARC members at
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