A note before I get on with it: This file is for those of you who, for whatever
reason, do not or have not read 2600 magazine. This issue of this file covers
the best short articles from September 1985 to August 1986.
Anyways, why bother waiting for me to type this stuff up? Why not do as I do
and get a subscription? All you have to do is send $12 to 2600, Box 752,
Middle Island NY 11953-0752. Call them voice at 516-751-2600 or call the 2600
BBS, THE PRIVATE SECTOR, at 201-366-4431. The things they need most are money
and articles, they can get money by more subscribers but they need YOU to write
GOOD articles on hacking, phreaking, etcetera in order to keep going.
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::::August 1985::::
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2600 A Hacking Victim...
When we received our June SBS Skyline bill, we were a bit surprised. Over six
hundred dollars of it came from calls we never made. But what's really
interesting is the way that the Skyline people handled it. In early June, we
got a call telling us that their sophisticated equipment detected hackers
trying to guess a code by scanning numerically. They said our code would soon
be discovered, so they were going to give us a new one, with two extra digits
added. They did this and that very day our old code was inactivated. The
illegal calls had occurred BEFORE that day, and we figure Skyline must have
known this. Maybe they thought that 2600, in our corporate clumsiness, would
pay a huge bill without investigation. Many big companies would. Gotta give
them credit for trying.
When we called up about it, they didn't want to handleit over the phone! "Send
the bill through the mail," they said. Mark the calls you made and we'll
deduct the rest." Why are phone companies so afraid to do things over the
phone?
As long as Skyline decided to give the "perpetrators" some extra time before
the investigation starts, we figure we might as well lend a hand too. Our old
code was 880099. We loved that code and are very upset at losing it. Our new
eight digit one is very difficult to remember and nowhere near as fun.
And one last note about those new eight digit numbers. Phone phreaks have
ALREADY figured out a way around them. If you dial the first six digits of an
eight digit code, then the ten digit phone number and hit a # key, you'll get
your tone back! That means there are only a hundred possible codes since there
are only two more digits to figure out and one of them DEFINITELY works! If
you enter six digits that are not part of an eight digit code, and then a ten
digit phone number, you'll get an error message immediately or that fake
carrier tone Skyline loves to send out. That tone, incidentally, is for you
hackers with Apples and Commodores that scan all night long looking for the
code that will get you through to a number that responds with a carrier tone.
In the morning, you see how many carrier detects you got and which codes got
them for you. Skyline's idea is that if EVERY invalid code gives a hacker a
carrier tone, there is no way for a computer to separate the good codes from
the bad ones. Come on! How about setting your computer to dial a NON-carrier
and telling it to print out only those codes that DIDN'T get a carrier tone?
And there are probably a hundred more ways. Big corporations can be SO much
fun.
