Hacking, Cracking, and Phreaking

Phone Phreaking

Phreaking is a way of emulating the 2,600 MHz (megahertz) tones that allows one to make free telephone calls. According to Paul Mungo and Brian Clough, authors of a 1992 book about hackers called Approaching Zero, the term “phreak” comes from a combination of the words phone, free, and freak.

Phone phreaking first began in the 1960s and continued until 1983, when the techniques of phreaking had been made obsolete by new developments in the telephone companies. Some people could whistle in a perfect 2,600 MHz pitch, most notably a blind man named Joe Engressia, who became known as the whistling phreaker. Also, a man named John Draper discovered that a whistle distributed as a prize in Captain Crunch cereal emitted a perfect 2,600 pitch. Draper, who became a very popular phreaker, came to be known as Captain Crunch. However, the most typical way of phreaking involved the use of what was known as a blue box or Mfer, a multifrequency transmitter that allowed the user the same access as a Bell operator. Blue boxes were constructed by phreakers using the 12 tones described in the Bell System Technical System Journal (1954 and 1960). Both Engressia and Draper, who were friends, distributed blue boxes to many blind children so that they could make free phone calls.

Phreaking entered the popular imagination in October 1971, when Esquire featured a story about phreaking entitled “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box.” Phreaking became popular on university campuses, prompting future Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to make blue boxes long before they built their first Macintosh.

During the 1970s, phreaking had become associated with political radicalism. Abbie Hoffman, leader of the Youth International Party Line (YIPL), became interested in phreaking as a means of resisting telephone monopoly. Hoffman described phreaking as a way of liberating Ma Bell. In 1971, Hoffman and a phreaker known as “Al Bell” began publishing a newsletter called Party Line, which described ways of subverting telephone lines for their own uses. In 1973, Party Line became known as TAP, standing for “technological assistance program.” Hoffman advocated liberating the telephone lines because he believed that taking control of communications systems would be a crucial action for mass revolt. In [Page 213]order to democratize telephony, TAP published many articles from AT&T's technical journals. In the spirit of freedom of information, TAP also published phone numbers for the White House and Buckingham Palace. By the mid-1970s, AT&T revealed that it lost approximately $30 million per year to telephone fraud, including phreaking.

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