The purist
hacker sees phreaking more as a way of eluding telephone traces than of
calling his or her friends around the world for free.
The first transition into phreaking and eventually carding happened
over a period of about six months in 1988. Early hackers on PI and Zen
relied primarily on dial-outs, like those at Melbourne University or
Telecom's Clayton office, to bounce around international computer
sites. They also used X.25 dial-outs in other countries--the US,
Sweden and Germany--to make another leap in their international
journeys.
Gradually, the people running these dial-out lines wised up. Dial-outs
started drying up. Passwords were changed. Facilities were cancelled.
But the hackers didn't want to give up access to overseas systems.
They'd had their first taste of international calling and they wanted
more. There was a big shiny electronic world to explore out there.
They began trying different methods of getting where they wanted to
go. And so the Melbourne underground moved into phreaking.
Phreakers swarmed to PABXes like bees to honey. A PABX, a private
automatic branch exchange, works like a mini-Telecom telephone
exchange.
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