-/\-/*\-/\-/*\-/\- The Third Cartel -\/-\*/-\/-\*/-\/- Presents: Manuscript II Field Phreaking -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- June, 1988 Introduction: The purpose of this manuscript is to introduce useful ------------- phreaking techniques. These techniques have been developed by the Third Cartel and have proved to be convenient and reliable. Field Phreaking Kit: ==================== The Field Phreaking Kit is a neccessity for the serious phreaker. Some so-called phreaks get all of their information including codes from BBS's and have an ego big enough to call themselves phreaks. The real phreak acquires knowledge on his own through perseverence and ingenuity. Following is a list of useful items for your Phreaking Kit: o Backpack: Get a nice one to hold all of your materials. o Test Phone: Very Handy. We'll tell you how to get one or make one. o Ratchet Set: Usually, you'll only need 7/16" and 3/8" size ratchets. o Screwdrivers: Get medium and large screwdrivers, and a phillips head. o Wire Cutters: Just in case you want to wipe out some lines. o Pliers: For misc. stuff. o Xacto or Pocket Knife: To strip or cut wires. o Penlight: Nice and small; very useful for night work. o Flashlight: If you need lots of light and have enough room in your pack. o Gloves: Make sure you don't get shocked or leave your fingerprints around. o Pencil and Paper: Write down locations, notes, numbers, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Third Cartel carries the following optional materials in their Field Kit: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- o Walki-Talkies: For communications when yelling isn't possible or smart. o Battery Operated Camara Flash: Good for flashing in someone's eyes at night Will blind a telco guy for a few seconds. o Mace/Dog Repellant: Spray in someone's eyes if they give you trouble. o Smoke Bomb: Helpful to divert attention or scare. [drop in telco car] [Mix 3 parts potassium nitrate with 2 parts sugar and melt] o Matches: For smoke bomb or anything that is flammable. o Bandana/Surgical Mask: Manholes are dusty; Wear these for easier breathing. o Marker: Mark your "territory" on phone boxes. o Fake Telco ID Card: Will make some people think that you work for telco. Organize your kit so you know where everything is and can get something quickly when needed. You don't want to be fumbling for your mace when the gestapo is about to get you. Test Phone: =========== The Test Phone is the most useful piece of equipment for Field Phreaking. You can try to sneak into a telco Plant Department [truckyard] and get a real test phone out of a truck like we did. If you'd rather not do this, don't worry; making your own test phone is ultra-easy. First, get a telephone for your own purposes. Find the wire coming out of the phone that is supposed to go to the wall's modular jack. It should be at least three feet long for convienience. Cut off the modular jack at the end of the wire. Strip the wire, and there should be two or four small wires inside. Hook the two middle wires to alligator clips [preferably insulated]. You now have a test phone! Very easy, indeed. Now let's see if you hooked everything up ok. First find your phone box. It'll probably be on the outside of your house. It's farly small, and you might need the ratchet to open it up. Once you get it open, you should see some screws. These are the terminals for your phone line. Hook the alligator clips to the two top terminals. If your phone is ok, you should get a dial tone. Once you know that your phone is working, a whole new world opens up to you! You can hook the phone up to your neighbor's terminal and call long distance or yell at the operator on their line. Be careful, though. You don't want to be talking to Sue in L.A. when your neighbors are home and awake. If they pick up the phone when you're already on, you could get into serious trouble. Of course, you could always listen in on them! If you want, you can hook wires up to your neighbor's terminal and lead them to your house. In case you didn't know, this is called Beige Boxing. You can then hack computers on their line, call Dial-A-Prayer, etc. Make sure to hide the wire well so that it won't be traced to your house! Manholes: ========= One way to get access to an abundance of phone lines is by getting into telco manholes. You don't want to accidentally get in a sewer manhole, so the first thing to do is find the differences between sewer and telephone manholes. If you have trouble with this, here's a few tips that might help: o Telco manhole covers are usually larger and heavier than other covers. o Telco manholes are scarce compared to sewer manholes. So if there are a lot of checkered manhole covers in your area, those are probably sewer manholes. If there are only a handful of unmarked manhole covers in your area, those probably contain phone lines. o Go to your local telco Central Office [CO] and find out what the manhole covers look like there. Find manhole covers that look the same in other areas, and pick a convenient/safe manhole to explore. Getting into a manhole is a different story. Here in the Denver area, it takes at least three people to get a manhole cover off. Hopefully it'll be easier to do in your area. To open the manhole, you'll probably need at least two crowbars [You could try using a pickaxe]. Get a group together to open the manhole, using 2 or more people with crowbars to slide the cover off. You might want to get a strong guy to push the manhole cover while the other people with crowbars support it. If you know of a tool that was made specifically for opening manholes, we'd appreciate it if you contacted us on some local Denver boards and told us about it. Likewise, if you have a better system for opening manholes, we'd be grateful for the information. Once you get the manhole cover off, shine a flahlight down to see if there's a ladder going to the bottom. Try a different manhole if there's no ladder. If you want to go down a manhole, don't forget to wear a bandana or surgical mask over your mouth so that you don't choke on dust. Also bring a flashlight so you can see what you're doing. Many times, there'll be a few inches of water at the bottom, so you might also want to wear boots. Down in the manhole, you might find some equipment or manuals. Go ahead and take them if you want; you deserve it! There should be some very large ABS plastic tubes going across the "room" you're in. The phone lines are inside these tubes. Attached to this tubing there will be some short, wide plastic cylinders. There'll be screws holding these cylinders on to the tubing. You'll need either a screwdriver or a ratchet to open a cylinder. If you happen to get a cylinder open, congratulations! You now have access to countless phone lines! We'll leave it to you to figure out what to do with all of those wires. Surely you'll figure something out! [snip, snip!] Exploring Telco Building Sites: =============================== One of the best ways to get information about telco is by going to a Central Office near you, exploring the trucks in a Plant Department, or "visiting" other telco buildings. The phone company is careless in many ways. They leave important, yet unshredded documents and computer printouts in their open dumpsters. Their cars, vans, and repair vehicles are almost always left unlocked. Inside their vehicles one can usually find manuals, test phones, computer cards [usually for mainframes, almost never for personal comuters], nice tool sets, etc.! It's almost as if they *want* to be ripped off! They deserve bad treatment just for their negligence. If possible, we like to be courteous to individual employees of telco. Most employees are fairly amiable and don't deserve trouble. It's the beuracracy of telco that deserves to be manhandled. Cheap practices such as monopolizing and the overpricing of services is the general reason why we phreaks do what we do with such determination. On with the show. Exploring Dumpsters: Looking inside telco dumpters is probably the easiest way to acquire useful information. Typycally, dumpters will be found outside a Central Office. They are usually left open for the world to see. It's a good idea to check a dumpster near you every day or two. You want to get your printouts and such before they go to the garbage dump. Make sure that you aren't pulling stuff out of the dumpster when the employees get out for the day! If possible, check the dumpster after closing hours just to be safe. But it's usually ok to get stuff out of it during working hours. You should find a lot of useful information, including computer numbers, if you consistently check the dumpsters. Exploring Plant Departments: Plant Department is just a strange name telco made for a truckyard. You might need your 'ol wire cutters for this job. Plan to stay up late for this mission, too. Around here, at least, the Plant Department doesn't close until 11:30 to 11:45 p.m. If your local Plant Department isn't bound by barbed-wire fences, you're lucky. If, unfortunately, it's like ours, you'll have to find a way to get in. First, try to find breaks in the fence where you might be able to slip through. If this isn't possible, and you can't climb over the fence because there's barbed-wire at the top, get out the [gasp!] wire cutters. Cut the barbed-wire and climb over the fence. Quietly move around the truck yard, opening various trucks, taking whatever you want. Although it might be hard, try to control yourself. Only take one item per truck so that the fools don't get suspicious. You don't ever want them to get suspicious, or you'll never be able to go back without fearing that they might be watching the truckyard for intruders. Just take a testphone and a few handy manuals. The testphone is usually in the back behind the passenger's seat. Manuals should be in the glove compartment or between the two front seats. The rest of the gadgets in the trucks have little or no practical uses for phreaks. Too bad. Be cool and don't take anything you don't need. Correction: Don't take anything you don't *really* want. Have phun with this, and please let us know if you find any useful gadgets in a telco truck. We'd like to hear from you! Look for a Field Phreaking II file soon. It should be Manuscript III. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>*Freddy*<<<< [The Only Living Peabody] The HORN . <> . .:.:.:.:.:.:.:. 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