150.txt

1000 HOWTOs for various needs [WINDOWS]

in first names or nicknames: names like Captain Crunch, Dr. No, Frank Carson
(also a code word for a free call), Marty Freeman (code word for M-F device),
Peter Perpendicular Pimple, Alefnull, and The Cheshire Cat.  He makes checks
alongside the names of those among these top twelve who are blind.  There are
five checks.

I ask him who this Captain Crunch person is.

"Oh.  The Captain.  He's probably the most legendary phone phreak.  He calls
himself Captain Crunch after the notorious Cap'n Crunch 2600 whistle."
(Several years ago, Gilbertson explains, the makers of Cap'n Crunch breakfast
cereal offered a toy-whistle prize in every box as a treat for the Cap'n Crunch
set.  Somehow a phone phreak discovered that the toy whistle just happened to
produce a perfect 2600-cycle tone.  When the man who calls himself Captain
Crunch was transferred overseas to England with his Air Force unit, he would
receive scores of calls from his friends and "mute" them -- make them free of
charge to them -- by blowing his Cap'n Crunch whistle into his end.)
"Captain Crunch is one of the older phone phreaks," Gilbertson tells me.  "He's
an engineer who once got in a little trouble for fooling around with the phone,
but he can't stop.  Well, they guy drives across country in a Volkswagen van
with an entire switchboard and a computerized super-sophisticated M-F-er in the
back.  He'll pull up to a phone booth on a lonely highway somewhere, snake a
cable out of his bus, hook it onto the phone and sit for hours, days sometimes,
sending calls zipping back and forth across the country, all over the
world...."

Back at my motel, I dialed the number he gave me for "Captain Crunch" and asked
for G---- T-----, his real name, or at least the name he uses when he's not
dashing into a phone booth beeping out M-F tones faster than a speeding bullet
and zipping phantomlike through the phone company's long-distance lines.

When G---- T----- answered the phone and I told him I was preparing a story for
Esquire about phone phreaks, he became very indignant.

"I don't do that.  I don't do that anymore at all.  And if I do it, I do it for
one reason and one reason only.  I'm learning about a system.  The phone
company is a System.  A computer is a System, do you understand?  If I do what
I do, it is only to explore a system. Computers, systems, that's my bag.  The
phone company is nothing but a computer."

A tone of tightly restrained excitement enters the Captain's voice when he
starts talking about systems.  He begins to pronounce each syllable with the
hushed deliberation of an obscene caller.

"Ma Bell is a system I want to explore.  It's a beautiful system, you know, but
Ma Bell screwed up.  It's terrible because Ma Bell is such a beautiful system,
but she screwed up.  I learned how she screwed up from a couple of blind kids
who wanted me to build a device.  A certain device.  They said it could make
free calls.  I wasn't interested in free calls.  But when these blind kids told
me I could make calls into a computer, my eyes lit up.  I wanted to learn about
computers.  I wanted to learn about Ma Bell's computers.  So I build the little
device, but I built it wrong and Ma Bell found out.  Ma Bell can detect things
like that.  Ma Bell knows.  So I'm strictly rid of it now.  I don't do it.
Except for learning purposes."  He pauses. "So you want to write an article.
Are you paying for this call?  Hang up and call this number."  He gives me a
number in a area code a thousand miles away of his own.  I dial the number.

"Hello again.  This is Captain Crunch.  You are speaking to me on a toll-free
loop-around in Portland, Oregon.  Do you know what a toll-free loop around is?
I'll tell you.

He explains to me that almost every exchange in the country has open test
numbers which allow other exchanges to test their connections with it.  Most of
these numbers occur in consecutive pairs, such as 302 956-0041 and 302
956-0042.  Well, certain phone phreaks discovered that if two people from
anywhere in the country dial the two consecutive numbers they can talk together
just as if one had called the other's number, with no charge to either of them,
of course.

"Now our voice is looping around in a 4A switching machine up there in Canada,
zipping back down to me," the Captain tells me.  "My voice is looping around up
there and back down to you.  And it can't ever cost anyone money.  The phone
phreaks and I have compiled a list of many many of these numbers.  You would be
surprised if you saw the list.  I could show it to you.  But I won't.  I'm out
of that now.  I'm not out to screw Ma Bell.  I know better.  If I do anything
it's for the pure knowledge of the System.  You can learn to do fantastic
things.  Have you ever heard eight tandems stacked up?  Do you know the sound
of tandems stacking and unstacking?  Give me your phone number.  Okay. Hang up
now and wait a minute."

Slightly less than a minute later the phone rang and the Captain was on the
line, his voice sounding far more excited, almost aroused.

"I wanted to show you what it's like to stack up tandems.  To stack up
tandems." (Whenever the Captain says "stack up" it sounds as if he is licking
his lips.)

"How do you like the connection you're on now?" the Captain asks me. "It's a
raw tandem.  A raw tandem.  Ain't nothin' up to it but a tandem.  Now I'm going
to show you what it's like to stack up.  Blow off.  Land in a far away place.
To stack that tandem up, whip back and forth across the country a few times,
then shoot on up to Moscow.

"Listen," Captain Crunch continues.  "Listen.  I've got line tie on my
switchboard here, and I'm gonna let you hear me stack and unstack tandems.
Listen to this.  It's gonna blow your mind."

First I hear a super rapid-fire pulsing of the flutelike phone tones, then a
pause, then another popping burst of tones, then another, then another.  Each
burst is followed by a beep-kachink sound.

"We have now stacked up four tandems," said Captain Crunch, sounding somewhat
remote.  "That's four tandems stacked up.  Do you know what that means?  That
means I'm whipping back and forth, back and forth twice, across the country,
before coming to you.  I've been known to stack up twenty tandems at a time.
Now, just like I said, I'm going to shoot up to Moscow."

There is a new, longer series of beeper pulses over the line, a brief silence,
then a ring.

"Hello," answers a far-off voice.

"Hello.  Is this the American Embassy Moscow?"

"Yes, sir.  Who is this calling?" says the voice.

"Yes.  This is test board here in New York.  We're calling to check out the
circuits, see what kind of lines you've got.  Everything okay there in
Moscow?"

"Okay?"

"Well, yes, how are things there?"

"Oh.  Well, everything okay, I guess."

"Okay.  Thank you."

They hang up, leaving a confused series of beep-kachink sounds hanging in
mid-ether in the wake of the call before dissolving away.

The Captain is pleased.  "You believe me now, don't you?  Do you know what I'd
like to do?  I'd just like to call up your editor at Esquire and show him just
what it sounds like to stack and unstack tandems. I'll give him a show that
will blow his mind.  What's his number?

I ask the Captain what kind of device he was using to accomplish all his feats.
The Captain is pleased at the question.

"You could tell it was special, couldn't you?"  Ten pulses per second. That's
faster than the phone company's equipment.  Believe me, this unit is the most
famous unit in the country.  There is no other unit like it.  Believe me."

"Yes, I've heard about it.  Some other phone phreaks have told me about it."

"They have been referring to my, ahem, unit?  What is it they said? Just out of
curiosity, did they tell you it was a highly sophisticated computer-operated
unit, with acoustical coupling for receiving outputs and a switch-board with
multiple-line-tie capability?  Did they tell you that the frequency tolerance
is guaranteed to be not more than .05 percent?  The amplitude tolerance less
than .01 decibel?  Those pulses you heard were perfect.  They just come faster
than the phone company. Those were high-precision op-amps.  Op-amps are
instrumentation amplifiers designed for ultra-stable amplification, super-low
distortion and accurate frequency response.  Did they tell you it can operate
in temperatures from -55 degrees C to +125 degrees C?"

I admit that they did not tell me all that.

"I built it myself," the Captain goes on.  "If you were to go out and buy the
components from an industrial wholesaler it would cost you at least $1500.  I
once worked for a semiconductor company and all this didn't cost me a cent.  Do
you know what I mean?  Did they tell you about how I put a call completely
around the world?  I'll tell you how I did it.  I M-Fed Tokyo inward, who
connected me to India, India connected me to Greece, Greece connected me to
Pretoria, South Africa, South Africa connected me to South America, I went from
South America to London, I had a London operator connect me to a New York
operator, I had New York connect me to a California operator who rang the phone
next to me.  Needless to say I had to shout to hear myself.  But the echo was
far out.  Fantastic.  Delayed.  It was delayed twenty seconds, but I could hear
myself talk to myself."

"You mean you were speaking into the mouthpiece of one phone sending your voice
around the world into your ear through a phone on the other side of your head?"
I asked the Captain.  I had a vision of something vaguely autoerotic going on,
in a complex electronic way.

"That's right," said the Captain.  "I've also sent my voice around the world
one way, going east on one phone, and going west on the other, going through
cable one way, satellite the other, coming back together at the same time,
ringing the two phones simultaneously and picking them up and whipping my
voice both ways around the world back to me. Wow.  That was a mind blower."

"You mean you sit there with both phones on your ear and talk to yourself
around the world," I said incredulously.

"Yeah.  Um hum.  That's what I do.  I connect the phone together and sit there
and talk."

"What do you say?  What do you say to yourself when you're connected?"

"Oh, you know.  Hello test one two three," he says in a low-pitched voice.

"Hello test one two three," he replied to himself in a high-pitched voice.

"Hello test one two three," he repeats again, low-pitched.

"Hello test one two three," he replies, high-pitched.

"I sometimes do this: Hello Hello Hello Hello, Hello, hello," he trails off and
breaks into laughter.

Why Captain Crunch Hardly Ever Taps Phones Anymore

Using internal phone-company codes, phone phreaks have learned a simple method
for tapping phones.  Phone-company operators have in front of them a board that
holds verification jacks.  It allows them to plug into conversations in case of
emergency, to listen in to a line to determine if the line is busy or the
circuits are busy.  Phone phreaks have learned to beep out the codes which lead
them to a verification operator, tell the verification operator they are
switchmen from some other area code testing out verification trunks. Once the
operator hooks them into the verification trunk, they disappear into the board
for all practical purposes, slip unnoticed into any one of the 10,000 to
100,000 numbers in that central office without the verification operator
knowing what they're doing, and of course without the two parties to the
connection knowing there is a phantom listener present on their line.

Toward the end of my hour-long first conversation with him, I asked the Captain
if he ever tapped phones.

"Oh no.  I don't do that.  I don't think it's right," he told me firmly.  "I