/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

              \      A BOM SQUAD RELEASE       /

              /        The History Of          \

              \     Hacking & Phreaking        /

               \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/



                           By Raven



                         -=-=-=-=-=-



Okay boys and girls, children of all ages...Here's a

revolutionary idear....The announcements foist!



                         -=-=-=-=-=-



     The file we released on smashing up cop cars and getting

away, ya know?  Well, don't try it unless you got half a ton

of cocaine in the back seat, and a billion bucks on the dash!

The cops are wise, and are liable to open fire on you once

you start pulling backwards, so, don't attempt it unless you

have no other options.  Another thing - now they're air bags

are quicker-draining, so they can start the chase almost as

soon as you are off.



                         �-�-�-�-�-�



      The Garden Of Souls � ???-ANA-RCHY � BOM Squad WHQ

      Graveyard Shift � COM-ING-SOON � Courier/Public HQ

             �rete � 201-984-1738 � 201 Dist Site

      Criminal's Sanctum � 908-888-4613 � 908 Dist Site



               -> And Now, On With The Show! <-



Okay, folks...First of all, I wrote this because, well, a lot

of you fellow hacker/phreakers out there do all yer

stuff, but don't know your roots.  Hacking and phreaking have

been around for over 20 years now.  So,

without further adue, I present, the History Of Hacking,

and Phreaking!





             

         -=- The History Of Hacking & Phreaking -=-



     Believe it or not, but hacking and phreaking have been

around since the '60s.  Yep.  Hacking is a legacy!  Phreaking

came around some time about 10 years later.





                      -The 60's Hacker-



     These were back in the days when a teenager couldn't

even buy a computer (because of price), much less fit it in

his house.  The 'hackers' were the people the sysop's of

lamer PD boards would have you believe - people who spent

lots of time with their computer (hacking away at the

keyboard).

     The true hackers came about when Massachusetts Institute

of Technology employed some nerds to do some artificial

intelligence and computer work for them.  These guys actually

created the models for the terminal your working on right

now.  They were the true and original programmers and

engineers.

     Anyhow, these guys were working on a project called MAC

(Multiple-Access Computer, Machine-Aided Cognition, or Man

Against Computers...Take yer pick).  All goes well as these

guys write some basic programs, build operation systems, and

play 4 color chess games, until the MAC programmers go public

with a computer time sharing program.  The first BBS, and it

even had over 100 nodes!

     Of course, only other guys with main frames could access

this thing (i.e. - the government, other big schools, and big

companies).  These sysops who worked at MIT did their best to

control the badly maintained MAC system, but the hoards of

users cluttered up everything.

     Then, something magical happened.  A man called John

McCarthy, Ph.D., crashed the MAC system.  Soon, others took

sport in crashing this international network.  Companies were

able to take place in a crude form of industrial espionage on

the MAC buy 'eavesdropping' on rival's E-Mail, and those

cheap cardboard punch cards (the first computer disks) were

always being corrupted by batch-file viruses.  Hacking is

born.

     However, crashing the system and all other 'evil'

activities were encouraged.  From them, sysops learned from

mistakes, and the hackers took place in the hackers'

obsession - the desire to learn as much as possible about a

system.





                  -The 70's Hacker/Phreaker-



     The 70's were a magical decade, and a flying leap for

phone fraud.  The first half of the 70's was like the 60's in

respect to hacking.  In the second half, hacking escalated

into 80's hacking (see below).

     Besides hacking, though, the 70's produced the phone

phreaks.  Phreaking was born from the non-existent womb of a

blind child from Tennessee named Joe Engressia.  Joe was one

of the rare people born with perfect pitch.  Because of that

gift, Joe was able to manipulate some of the most

sophisticated and widespread technology in the world.

     Joe enjoyed the phone system.  Being a curious 8 year

old, he called recorded messages all over the world, because

it was free, and is was a good past time.  One day, he was

listening to a message and whistling.  When he hit a certain

tone, the message clicked off.  You or I might have hung up,

but curious 8 year olds don't.

     Joe fooled around with other numbers and the same pitch,

and found he could switch off any recorded message.  Joe

called his local phone company, and wanted to know why this

happened.  He didn't understand the explanation given, but he

did realize that he had stumbled on to a whole new world to

explore.

     How was Joe able to do this?  Joe had stumbled onto the

multifrequency system (known as MF to phreakers world wide).

The  purpose of this system was to do most of the the job a

human could do, but done cheaper and quicker by a machine.

     Joe used this system by whistling the right pitches at

the right times to get free calls.  Of course, he never

wanted to hurt the phone company.  He loved the phone

company.  It was merely curiosity which caused him to do this

all.

     Joe phreaked all the way into college (he was in college

around the early 70's).  While phreaking free calls back home

for some friends, he was caught.  Joe's case was a world wide

publicity case (beginning first with an article in Esquire in

1971).  Soon, he received calls from phreaks world wide

asking advice on certain pitches.  Joe Engressia had become

the phounding phather of phreaks.

     Several years before, in 1954, the phone company made a

large mistake.  They printed all the MF codes in their

Technical Journal, a book which was easily obtained then, but

has not been released to the public in over 15 years because

of the damage phreaks could do with it.  Phreaks learned the

MF, and began using everything from their mouths to pipe

organs to phreak calls.

     Then, the most ironic thing of all aided phreakers.

John Draper, an air force technician stationed over seas

discovered that if a toy whistle in boxes of Cap'n Crunch had

a hole covered up, it produced a pure 2600 cycle tone, the

exact pitch needed for a free call anywhere (at least it used

to be).  Soon, Draper was calling other phreaks all over the

world.  Paris, Peking, London, New York and more.

     Using his 2600 cycle whistle and other tools of the

trade, Draper set up a phreak underground.  It was a mass

node 'party-line' in which many phreaks talked to one another

at one time.  In the throne was Cap'n Crunch - John Draper's

handle.

     The phreakers exchanged knowledge, and soon combined

their ideas to build the blue box.  The blue box can reproduce

any MF pitch.  The whole thing came together in October,

1971, in Esquire magazine.  Ron Rosenbaum exposed the

phreaking world from Joe to Crunch in one article called

"Secrets Of The Little Blue Box".

     Rosenbaum distorted the phreaking world greatly.

According to him, Crunch had a van which was chock-full of

electronics.  Crunch would drive around the country side,

going from pay phone to pay phone, stealing cash from the

coin box for money, and placing calls to phreaker friends.

Occasionally, Crunch would call his 'mentor', Joe, for

advice.  Nah.  I don't think so.  Rosenbaum glorified the

phreaking world, making Crunch a romantic hero.

     Draper/Crunch was arrested, convicted, and did time.

While in the big house, several mafia inmates tried to

recruit him into a commercial blue-box front.  Draper

declined, and they knocked out a few of his teeth, and broke

his back.

     After leaving prison, Draper quit phreaking, and began

programming.  Last the world heard, he was head of a

programming division of Apple.





                      -The 80's Hacker-



     During the 1980's the hacker population probably went up

1000-fold.  Why?  For several reasons.  The first being that

the personal computer and clones were made available to the

public at cheap prices.  People could afford to buy a

terminal and set up a BBS.  And, where you find BBS's, you

find hackers.

     The second, and probably biggest reason was the movie

WarGames.  WarGames displayed hacking as a glamourous

profession.  It made hacking sound easy.  I once heard that

the estimate of hackers in the US increased by 600% after

WarGames.  Modem users also increased, but only by a mere

1200%.  This made hacking easy, though, because it was also

estimated that one third of "WarGames Generation Hackers" had

the password 'Joshua'.  If you have seen the movie, you know

that that name had some significance.  Many hackers didn't

like WarGames, though.  They thought it made hacking sound

like a pansy thing to do.  To non-hackers, though, WarGames

was great.

     The third reason is because of the mass publicity

surround WarGames and hacking.  If we had a controlled media,

probably the only hackers in the USA would be spies and

corporate computer techs.  The media increased the hacker

population by a lot, also.





             -The Hacker of The 90's and Beyond-



     Hacking of the 90's have basically been crashers of

BBS's and company boards.  There have been a few virus-smiths

around.  Piracy is always around.  Who knows what the future

brings in the world of hacking, phreaking, and anarchy?