He noticed that when he called certain 008
numbers--free calls--the phone would ring a few times, click, and then
pause briefly before ringing some more. Eventually a company
representative or answering service picked up the call. Anthrax had
read about diverters, devices used to forward calls automatically, in
one of the many telecommunications magazines and manuals he was
constantly reading. The click suggested the call was going through a
diverter and he guessed that if he punched in the right tones at the
right moment, he could make the call divert away from a company's
customer service agent. Furthermore, any line trace would end up at
the company.
Antrax collected some 008 numbers and fiddled with them. He discovered
that if he punched another number in very quickly over the top of the
ringing--just after the click--he could make the line divert to where
he wanted it to go. He used the 008 numbers to ring phone conferences
around the world, where he hung out with other phreakers, particularly
Canadians such as members of the Toronto-based UPI or the Montreal
group, NPC, which produced a phreakers' manual in French. The
conversation on the phreaker's phone conferences, or phone bridges as
they are often called, inevitably turned to planning a prank.
Pages:
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638