478 DEAR HACKER

478 DEAR HACKER

Dear 2600:

Check out who registered fordsucks.com. It was Ford itself.

Bill Not really. They sued the poor guy who dared to register it as an expression of

free speech. They won. And that’s why we have fordreallysucks.com.

Dear 2600:

I saw the letter about being able to get the phone number you are call- ing from. Many phone companies have such a feature, but you have to do a little social engineering with telephone installers and people who install monitored alarm systems. A pen tap on your own line can catch such numbers if you are lucky enough to have a lineman use your line at the pole. Back in the early ’80s, I found out about the number for this in my home town. It was the ten-digit phone number 310-222-2222. I also discovered that 410 would give the clicks — like it was reading back the digit recordings of your number but you could only hear the clicks. I figured that this was for use on party lines where the common return for the pair was in a different configuration than

a dedicated line. As I moved around the country, I discovered the same would work in other areas. I didn’t know enough at the time to know if this number was a default setting on a particular brand of equipment or just a policy of the particular LEC. Later I discovered that 970 would work in other parts of the country. Occasionally I ran into one that was 970-222-2222. But now that the software has been updated on the phone switches to support additional area codes, I haven’t seen these work for a while. Where I live now, they had a local number temporarily set aside that would do the deed, but they have since redirected that number to their main receptionist.

I also discovered on one phone system in the early ’80s that if you di- aled 810, you would get someone answering the phone “Test Port.” On one occasion we played “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” with DTMF tones (off key: 555-4-6-5-99-88-4) to this guy and hung up on him. He rang back the phone with different ring lengths to play the song

A C U LT U R E O F R E B E L S

back to us using the phone’s ringer. That freaked out the others who were in the area of the payphone at the time.

I would be real interested in hearing from others who have discovered such numbers that still work in their area. exo

Dear 2600:

I have been aware of your group and mildly interested since I can remember. I subscribed to your publication for some time but now just cast sidelong glances at your website.

The skill inherent in your readership is significant. It is sad to me that it is wasted on self interests. While defending the rights of wrongly prosecuted hackers is noble, why not raise national awareness of your potential by bringing hacking skills to bear on problems that U.S. intelligence agencies are either too incompetent, or have their hands tied, to solve?

While planes still crash into national landmarks, warfare of our time has largely become a war of infosec. Your readership could potentially

be the equivalent of a special forces unit in this arena. Who better to

be a front line of information discovery and disclosure to aid in the persecution of those responsible for terrorist activities?