182 DEAR HACKER
182 DEAR HACKER
to hack traffic lights, you should be very careful not to put anyone’s life in danger. So we won’t insult our readers’ intelligence by saying it.
Dear 2600: Enclosed is a copy of an advertisement for Modem Mate I and Modem
Mate II. “Modem Mate I secures your modem by foiling the hacker. By attaching Modem Mate I to your existing modem, you make your computer system virtually undetectable. When a hacker attempts to call your modem, Modem Mate I intercepts the call by answering with a realistic sounding ‘Hello.’ The hacker will simply hang up, not realizing that a computer system even exists on the other end. Only someone who knows the proper codes and procedures can gain access to the modem.” Modem Mate II only allows predefined calls using Caller ID.
Julian Cleveland
Would we love to hear that “realistic sounding hello.”
Dear 2600: The article, “2600 Robbed of Touch Tones” interested me for several
reasons. In 1978, I brought a touch tone telephone from Chicago to my parents’ house in a backwoods area of the Pacific coast that still runs crossbar equipment. I plugged the phone into the old style modular to four-prong adapter, dialed a couple of numbers, and, lo and behold,
I was doing that touch tone thing! (We were probably the first in that community to have a touch tone phone.) My mom made me call the phone company to see if it was all right to use a touch tone phone. I hit the “0” on the touch tone keypad and talked with the operator. The conversation went something like this:
TECHNOLOGY
Me: “Hello. Yes, you can, I’d like to know if I can just plug in a touch tone phone and use it without any problems?”
Operator: “No, we have to put more voltage on the line and then charge you $1.50 extra each month.”
Me: “Uh. Oh, okay, well we’ll call you when we go to touch tone phones, thanks.”
By my calculations, my parents have saved about $270 now by not allowing the phone company to steal an extra $1.50 a month for doing absolutely nothing.
I know what a hassle it can be to have to go back to pulse, but I learned
a great trick while living in Brazil that makes me appreciate pulse abilities. Most of the phones were rotary (as a matter of fact, I only came across one touch tone phone in the span of a year). To lock the phones from unauthorized use because you get charged for even local calls, they would put a locking mechanism on the dialing rotor of the phone. A kid I happened to be with showed me how to toggle the “on- hook” mechanism to simulate the pulses. Phone numbers with a lot of 9s and 0s are a little tedious, but with practice, even those numbers will be a breeze. By pushing down and up on this mechanism quickly, we were able to make all the phone calls we needed and then some!
I’ve got a cheesy phone with a dead keypad, so I keep in practice by using that phone to search for new loops and such while watching TV. Sure, a pocket dialer would do the same thing (unless you’re in the 2600 office in New York!), but you never know when the batteries are gonna die or something. So whenever you see one of those locking covers on either a touch tone pad or the rotary portion of a phone, make an extra special effort to try out the technique!
Power Spike An old trick that still works. By the way, it looks like we may have figured out a way