Phreakers are hackers who specialize in telephone fraud. What type of telephone fraud/attack makes use of a device that generates tones to simulate inserting coins in pay phones, thus fooling the system into completing free calls?
Correct Answer: A
A red box is a phreaking device that generates tones to simulate inserting coins in pay phones, thus fooling the system into completing free calls. In the US, a dime is represented by two tones, a nickel by one, and a quarter by a set of 5 tones. Any device capable of playing back recorded sounds can potentially be used as a red box. Commonly used devices include modified
Radio Shack tone dialers, personal MP3 players, and audio-recording greeting cards.
BLUE BOX
An early phreaking tool, the blue box is an electronic device that simulates a telephone operator's
dialing console. It functions by replicating the tones used to switch long-distance calls and using
them to route the user's own call, bypassing the normal switching mechanism. The most typical
use of a blue box was to place free telephone calls - inversely, the Black Box enabled one to
receive calls which were free to the caller. The blue box no longer works in most western nations,
as modern switching systems are now digital and no longer use the in-band signaling which the
blue box emulates. Instead, signaling occurs on an out-of-band channel which cannot be
accessed from the line the caller is using (called Common Channel Interoffice Signaling (CCIS)).
BLACK BOX
The black box (as distinguished from blue boxes and red boxes), sometimes called an Agnew (see
Spiro (device) for the origin of the nickname), was a device built by phone phreaks during the
1960s and 1970s in order to defeat long distance phone call toll charges, and specifically to block
the supervision signal sent by the receiving telephone handset when the call was answered at the
receiving end of the call.
The act of picking up the handset of a telephone causes a load to be put on the telephone line, so
that the DC voltage on the line drops below the approximately 45 volts present when the phone is
disconnected. The black box consisted of a large capacitor which was inserted in series with the
telephone, thereby blocking DC current but allowing AC current (i.e., ringing signal and also audio
signal) to pass. When the black box was switched into the telephone line, the handset could be
picked up without the telephone system knowing and starting the billing process.
In other words, the box fooled the phone company into thinking no one had answered at the
receiving end, and therefore billing was never started on the call.
WHITE BOX
The white box is simply a portable Touch-Tone Keypad.
Source: HARRIS, Shon, All-In-One CISSP Certification Exam Guide, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2001,
Page 654.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_box_(phreaking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
http://www.bombshock.com/archive/Phreaking_and_Phone_Systems/Box_Plans/
