냐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 栢栢栢栢昉께께굇굇굅같�|O|u|t|b|r|e|a|k|臍같굇굇굉께께栢栢栢� +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Issue #1 - Page 7 of 13 냐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 Red Boxing Written by Meggito on August 4, 2001 Well, it rained for 5 minutes so my cable's out, and without my internet I've finally decided to write that damn red boxing article I never got around to. This was written for those who either are new to the scene or haven't gotten much out of other texts. I am not going to talk about how to make a red box from scratch in this file, maybe in another, but that's not what this is for. This is for the average newbie phreak who doesn't have a degree in electrical engineering. There may be a small amount of new info here, but not much you couldn't find somewhere else, except maybe on the Verizon area. I've tried to gather together dispersed informationand I like to think this is slightly more detailed than other red boxing texts, but its probably not. I'd be surprised if there weren't mistakes, both grammatical and material wise, just e-mail me (meggito@dcap.com) and I'll fix them. Well, here it is... What Is Red Boxing Red boxing is a method of getting free phone calls that has been around for quite a few years. Many people believe it is a dead art that no longer works but this is far from the truth. Despite the enormous (and by enormous I mean feeble) efforts of Verizon (Bell Atlantic and GTE merger) and other phone companies across the country, there has been no end to red boxing, though they have made it far more difficult. I don't know why they call it red boxing but I'd figure its because the first one was red or some such simple reason, honestly I don^�t much care. Phreaking is not about making free calls, it is about learning about the phone systems. Making free calls is a means to an end. I have tried very hard to give insight into phones and the phone system in this. Seems odd I should have to go back and put this in but: MAKING OR OWNING A RED BOX IS ILLEGAL. USING ONE IS THEFT. YOU CAN BE PROSECUTED. But if you get caught you're most likely a fucking retard and deserve a few nights in jail and anal rapings. Background On Phones Go ahead and skip this section if you don't care as much why it works as how, because this information isn't vital to red boxing but it would be something good for any phreak to know. Now, we've all picked up a phone and gotten that nice dial tone. When you pick up the receiver on a telephone it completes one of two loops that connects your phone with the phone company exchange. The phone company then sends you a dialtone to tell you it is ready to receive your input. This input comes in the form of pulses or DTMF tones sent to the phone company. DTMF is dual tone multifrequency, which means two tones at different frequencies are played at one. All your phone does when you dial is send those pretty noises to the phone company, and they go 'Hey, he pushed a 5, aren't we smart', this is because phone companies think they are smart. This is why you can sit there with a tone dialer (white box), or other instrument, duplicate the sounds, and dial without touching the keypad on your phone. Now, once you enter the number you want to call, the phone company connects to that address's phone on the ringer line, the other loop on the phone, only this one is always open. If the line is in use they send you back a nice busy signal. If not they send that phone a signal telling the phone to, you guessed it, ring. They also sends you a ringback tone, that^�s not their phone, that's the smart-alicky phone company. If the called party picks up, completing the circuit, then the phone company closes its end, unless the ops are being nosy, which they do. They then disable both the ringing signal and ringback tone. How Red Boxing Works Well, if you didn't read the last section go back and read it, I changed my mind. When we put a quarter into a pay phone it makes 5 tones very quickly. A nickel will make 1, a dime 2 , and a quarter 5(5 cents each guys). This is sent to the phone company and they go 'Hey, he put in a quarter, I'm a genius'. You dial your friend and they decide how much money it should cost. Then, if and only if, I can't emphasize that enough, you've put in enough money they connect your call. Now, let's say that you a some gizmo that made the same sound that the quarter made earlier. You'd then be able to hold that gizmo up to the mouth-piece and make the noise, and ta-da!, the phone company thinks you gave them a shiny quarter. This is because they use ACTS, Automated Coin Toll System, which automatically recognizes coins based on those chirps. So now you can make calls anywhere for however long you want and they're all free! This is getting good! The Standard Tone Dialer Red Box Quite some time ago a phreaker realized that you could take your everyday radio shack tone dialer and make it into a red box by changing one part that controlled the tones. Now of course he was a smart guy and has lots of money. All you have to do is find yourself a radio shack tone dialer open it up and switch the 3.5795 crystal with a 6.5536 crystal and the * button will make the tone! A 6.5 crystal will also work if you have one, these work just fine and they are reasonably smaller. Also a 6.49 is super great if you can find them. Now let's take this one step at a time: First you need a tone dialer (a tone dialer is a white box). Radio Shack is the best place to get them though a few other places such as Digikey (www.digikey.com) sell them also. I'd recommend go down to your local radio shack as quickly as you can and buy all their tone dialers because they have been discontinued, I had to drive my ass all the way down to Fredericksberg last time (30 minutes) and they sell for around $50 on ebay. I'd recommend the #43-146 33-memory model from Radio Shack as that is the one I personally used. They used to run for about $25 but they're liquidating them and I've found them from about $5 to $2.97 and one guy found one for $2.47. This of course kicks some serious ass because I haven't had a spare $25 in a few months. Radio Shack does sell other models but the older ones are ugly and you cant be elite with those now can you? I've heard rumors and seen pictures of a newer model that is smaller, shaped better, has an LCD, more room on the inside, and remembers more numbers, but I'm not sure whether or not this is true. If you do stumble upon one of these send it to me and I'll figure out some cool stuff to do with it, or give you money, or let you have your way with me, whatever, just send it to me. Second you'll need a crystal. These are hard to find commercially because the retards at radio shack don't know what the hell you're talking about. Trust me, I've never been able to get one from them even though they're in the damn catalog with a number and everything. Now once again you can go to Digikey or some other place, but for this I recommend going to the various phreaking sites who'll sell them fairly cheap (yes they charge them up a little, but hey, 49 cents to $2.50 isn't that much is it?). I personally got mine from the Phone Losers of America (www.phonelosers.org) because they give neat-o stickers, but I've found other sites that claim to sell them as well. I've just switched to bulk ordering from digikey and selling them to others for about $2.00 each and will make them available at www.dcap.org (if it still exists) soon. These sites usually sell the 6.5536 crystals or sometimes the 6.5. If you can find a place that sells 6.49s get them. You'll also need a few basic tools. Some mini-screwdrivers, preferably the cool ones with the spinning top (Radio Shack cat #64-1948, remember flatheads work in philips but not the other way around). You'll also need a soldering iron or gun. I personally prefer my $15 Radio Shack 100 watt one (#64-2193, I love Radio Shack), because its 100 watts is way excessive and the gun shape is just bitchin. You can use a relatively low wattage, I'd guess around 15-20, but I'm not sure and since they take forever to heat up I'd say go all out. Also irons, by which I mean the pointy ones, are usually easier to use, but not as bitchin. You'll also need some idea of how to use a soldering gun, they usually come with instructions, the key is simply not to burn the shit out of yourself. You might want some tweezers or long needle nose pliers to use to manipulate things so that you don't have to put your fingers in harm's way. Wire would be good to have for some mods (modifications for those of you like me) like moving the crystal around and removing the light, none of which are necessary. Get magnet wire like Radio Shack #278-1345. I just tear apart phone cords for wire, but then again I have 50 phone cords I stole from military school when I got kicked out(www.rma.edu, they are their own ISP and give service to all of Front Royal and have a fun PBX). If you aren't as lucky just grab some off the phones on display in your local Walmart/K-Mart/Ames, the ones connecting the handsets to the bases or sometimes just chilling on the back. (Of course I don't encourag theft) Well, now that we have all the necessities, open up the tone dialer by removing the 6 screws, 2 on top and 4 under the battery cover. Lift of the top slowly, the wires connecting the speakers and such are likely to come off if you do it to fast or hard, just the way I like it. If they do come off strip them a little and solder them back on good as new. Now locate the crystal. It would normally be a little gray cylinder on the middle of the left side. They've also changed them so that they like capacitors sometimes, to insulate them (I've also heard to disguise them and honestly don't care, the point is that they look like capacitors). The models where they look like capacitors are easier to modify. Nothing to move out of the way or bend. They'll be in the same place, but it looks like all those other damn little brown things lying around (I don't trust capacitors...) and says 'Z3.58M' on it. I^�ve seen both types. Now unsolder that carefully. Next you need to put that new crystal in. The easiest way is to put it to the left of the solder points (or whatever the hell you call them) so that its about a 2 millimeters from the edge. You may need to bend some things or move them somewhere else in the tone dialer. Next cut the leads on the crystal a little if necessary and bend them downward so they touch the solder points. Now just solder it into place and you should be done. You can also run wires so that its in another part of the tone dialer with more room, or bend it somehow to the right or some other unlethargic thing. Once you have it working you can test it by holding the on/off switch in place and seeing if it works. If it does close it up and you're done. If not you've screwed up somewhere along the line. One problem I have is that the switch won't always touch when I close it up, mess with it a little and don't overuse you're 100 watt soldering gun and you'll be fine (I learned that the hard way). Once its working the * button will make the correct tone. Unless you want to hit the button over and over for a nickel just program the speed dial for 5 *s. On the 33 memory tone dialers switch the lower switch to store then hit Memory, followed by * five times, Memory again, and then the button to assign it to. I'd use one of the top 3 easily accessible buttons because I'm lazy. Now, if you're trying to make long distance calls and you don't want to hit the button over and over, or hit it too fast, program in a Pause between sets of 5 *s to separate them. You can use 0 to make it go faster but then if you're on with an op they'll know. Actually, a Pause is a little short for an op anyway so what the hell, hit 0. Personally I program the first button for 25 cents ending with a Pause. Next I program the second button with 4 of the first (yes, it works) to get $1.00. If I could I'd make the last one $5.00 cause all long distance calls seem to cost $4.80 but its too much for one memory slot so I program in 3 of the second button ($3.00) or just some little tune to keep myself entertained. Now, If you want to make a call that's say, $6.50, you push the third button twice, then agian, the the first twice. You can not queue up more than about $4.00 at once, meaning if you hit the $3.00 button twice it won't do the second one unless you've waited for about $2.00 to go in. If this isn't working then put it in by hand, one quarter at a time. Not that it matters to most people, but the * tone is actually both a 1700 Hz and 2200 Hz tone together if I remember right. The tones play at 33 milliseconds on then 33 off for the nickel and dime and 66 for the quarter so the quarter is slightly slowed (actually its really slowed but the phones don't seem to mind). Mods for the Tone Dialer Well, first off I always leave mine on and end up running down the damn batteries, and the most common mod stops this. All you do is take out the bulb. If you're like me and want to do it the fun way, take some giant electrical source (car battery) and just burn out the bulb. This is kinda pointless and stupid (and about as dangerous as putting a wrench across it) but its so much more fun. Once you've done this you can glue the on switch or just break it into its two pieces and just leave the inside part in so that it completes the circuit. Rewire it! The original wires blow, put in better ones. You might also want to make your own cheap switches because these also suck. You can also use a switch so that you can still use standard tones. Since having a tone dialer isn't illegal you can quickly flip your switch and be back to tone dialer so you're safe from the Verizon guy (who won't be able to figure it out of course). Regular tones themselves also come in handy frequently and music sounds better in regular tones. There are two ways of doing this... The easiest way to have both sets of tones is to get a two position switch, Radio Shack #275-407 is a small one that works well, also #900-7597. First you probably want to figure out where you want your switch to be, it should probably be on the outside (so you can switch it). You'll need to run wires connecting the switch to the solder points where the original crystal used to be. You can run these outside through the vents or where the battery cover goes. Then you solder one crystal to each end of the switch. You can cover the new switch and crystals (which will also be on the outside) with electrical tape or some other thing. Personally I think electrical tape fixes everything. Another way to run the switch is to have it down on the bottom of the tone dialer and run the wires around the side. This often involves taking out the board so that you can run the wires easily. You'll need to cut a whole into the bottom, and this is were an excessive soldering iron comes into its own ( they melt plastic quickly and accurately but smell like shit when you do). The hole needs to be big enough for at least the switching part or the whole switch depending on which switch you use. Another problem with this is you'll have to be able to fit both crystals inside the tone dialer which is a bitch. I'll go into this in the next mod in more detail... The harder way is kinda pointless but every good phreak has to have one of these stealth models (I don't anymore and look how unelite I am). The whole idea of this is to make it so that when the tone dialer is right side up it makes the standard tones and when its upside down it makes red box tones. This is accomplished by using a mercury switch instead of a slider switch, Radio Shack #275-040. Now the problem with this is you'll need to put both crystals and the mercury switch in there and that^�s a royal bitch. There are easier ways to do this if you have smaller crystals, but this is a fairly good method for the more common 6.5536 crystal. You'll connect everything like the switches but you'll have to run wires around. Don't connect any wires yet. First cut down the leads of the crystals pretty short, about half a centimeter long. Put some electrical tape over soldering points for the transistor on the bottom, it will be a brownish thing running up and down a little right of the middle on the bottom. Now take the big yellow thing and flip it horizontally, being careful not to hurt it or its connections. Now, look at the back of the other side. There is a large open space on the bottom left of the speaker. Glue or use a little soldering to put the larger 6.5536 crystal there. This is often when people will use the 6.5, or 6.49 if you can find them, crystal because of lack of room. It is possible to get the 6.5536 crystal in there, but its a real bitch. Now, untape the bronzish circular thing to the bottom right of the speaker. Glue/solder the smaller 3.5795 crystal ( the original one) in the space behind it. Next connect a reasonably sizable wire (you can cut it down in a minute) to each end of the 3.5795 crystal and run them through the slit in the upper right of the circle its within, use thin wire. Then electrical tape the bronzes thing back down where it was. Now connect both of the crystals to the mercury switch and the mercury switch to where the crystal originally was. You might want to cover other connections with electrical tape as well to prevent screw ups. Finally orient the mercury switch so that when the dialer is held right-side up it uses the regular DTMF tones and upside down using the red box tones. If you are not sure which is which you can play with it some or try to use a multimeter. I can't think of a very good way to explain the orientation. Then you close it up carefully and hope it work. If it does DO NOT OPEN IT AGAIN. If you do you're a retard and retards break things. There definately have to be better ways to do this but I managed to get this way to work for a while. Other red boxes There are quite a few other types of red boxes. Most of them involve recording the tones to another device. Favorites seem to be the hand-held recorders or the yakbak types. These work fine just make sure you don't dink with the speed too badly. Another good one is writing it on a CD, or a tape for the poor among us, and just playing through headphones or out of one of those giant shoulder boom boxes that I like to carry around. And now they have these no-fangled MP3 playing devices. And guess what!, use your brand-spanking new PDA and put a nice dialer program and the readily available tones in it. Thats right, your personal digital assistant, or whatever the hell it stands for, makes a perfect redbox. I've also heard a lot about using hallmark recording card things, but since I couldn't find one in the store the other day I'm assuming (I do that) they don't make them anymore, and I don't think that'd impress the chicks much either. Since I first wrote this article I have found some modifications for the hallmark card red box. Basically you can replace the regular switch with an SPST to record an amount on rather having to just hold the button. This is accomplished by just cutting the wires to the original switch and replacing it with the new switch, polarity is unimportant so you don't have to wory about it being backwards. Also, to avoid bad recording quality you can replace the mike with a phono plug. This will allow you to hook this right into your sound card and get a very accurate recording. Just mark both the wires to the mike (both green) and cut them. Now replace this with a phono plug. Make sure that it has the same polarity by taking the wire from the center of the mike and hooking that to the tip. Then you just plug it right into your soundcard. You'll have to screw with the volume some to get it right, the key is to keep it fairly low. As high as you can get it without distortion. Once you've recorded the sounds in you can then remove the phono plug completely from the loop. Both of these mods are nice if you feel like making one of these hallmark cards but their are easier ways to make better red boxes. Other things you can do is create a new, better case for it and/or put in better wires, the ones in there really suck. This is really either a boredom killer or a challenge. There are a couple ways to get the tones. The easiest is to run a search on yahoo or some other search engine for keywords like red, box, and tone. Then you can just record them through your speakers. Biggest problem with this is distortion and what-not. This is also how you'll get the tones for the PDA or if you're using phonoplug technology. Another way to get the tones includes recording them from the phone itself. Just find two pay phones next to each other. Have one call the other. Drop quarters into one and record the sound through the other. You can also call someone's house from a pay phone and have them record the tones. Only problem is this requires friends, and even if you have them they aren't to be trusted. The whistles method is doable but incredibly retarded. The idea behind this is to get two whistles and tune one to 1700 Hz and one to 2200 Hz and blow them at the same time to create the correct tone. This is an extremely pointless waste of time. First you'd have to get the whistles, them tune them with a dowel rod camparing then to known sound, then practice to get the timing right, if you could even do it fast enough. Then tape them together and go blow them into a phone like a fucking dumbass. If you do this you ought to be shot but I've included it anyway. (I'd also figure you could do this with the tuning forks or whatever you use to turn the whistles, but what do I know...) Also you can get another white box (a tone dialer is a white box) or silver boxes (white boxes modified to have the A, B, C, and D tones) and make similar modifications. Sometimes its different, especially with the various homemade white/silver boxes and you'll have to figure out what is what before you can screw with it. Problems With Red Boxing First off, no 900 numbers for us perverts, sorry guys (and girls). Same with other weird pay pay phone numbers and some teleconferencing numbers. This is easily solved by beiging paste the pay phone but I'm not covering that here. It will not work on COCOTs (customer owned coined operated telephone or something along those lines). They do not use ACTS or even connect to the phone company while you're paying. The phone itself generates those dialtones and they're fake. Best thing to do in this situation is rip it apart and steal all the valuable parts that you can use for other things or sell to your phreak friends who know what to do with them. One COCOT can yield like five hundred dollars if you're a good business man. Or just go read a COCOT text file! The biggest problem I run into with red boxing is muted phones. Basically these phones won't let anything into the mouth-piece until you've connected. If you can blow into the mouth-piece and hear it come back through the ear-piece you're fine, if not then its muted (some phones have some weird tone filters, but this is extremely rare). These are a real pain in the ass, and around here comprise about 40% of the pay phones, but in other areas I^�ve been to its much lower. Around here all the Sprint and AT&T phones are muted while the slightly more common Verizon phones (and Bell Atlantic) are almost exclusively not. COCOTS aren't overly common but they're here. Now, if you come to a muted phone you can try putting in a nickel and sometimes it will unmute. You can also try to get around it by having an operator dial for you. Just hit 0 and tell her a button won't work or there's gum all over the phone or there^�s feces in the phone booth seems to work. This rarely works for me here, but in other areas it can be done more frequently. If you can convince one of the nice ops its an emergency they'll break down and do it for you. Once they dial they'll ask you to put in your money, wait between quarter tones or it'll be pretty damn obvious, I'd also jingle coins and make annoyed comments while I was at it, actually, I wouldn't, but you should. You may have to bullshit an operator to get local calls as well. Local calls don't use the ACTS (Automated Coin Toll System) tones which is what you need the phone to recognize. Now, bullshitting the ops doesn't sound very hard but around here and can take a long time and a lot of patience. The best solution for local calls is 1010288 or the like. I just dial through AT&T, 1010228-1-areacode-prefix-suffix. I've heard you can sometimes drop the 1, the area code, or both if it doesn't work, but I've never needed to waste my precious time trying. A few things will trip you to an operator. Playback devices, like hand-held recorders often play too fast or too slow when you screw with the speed, so don't. You sometimes get the same thing when you have low batteries in any type of red box, whether it be a tone dialer, CD player, or yakbak. A lot of the time the sound on playback devices is too distorted, either from the recording process or just sucking. Some phones in general do trip ops all the time. You will ALWAYS trip to them on occasion from any phone (like 1 in 3 calls). I know one phone that gives you an op even if you pay and lots that does it whenever I try to red box. If there is a phone next to the one not working well TRY IT! Apparently that isn't obvious. Now, sometimes the operators just send you on your merry way when you red box some more money to them and they hear the sound. Others can tell the difference between quarters and tones because they're apparently slightly different (a shitload slower), but this is rare, and the ops who can often just say something clever and send your call through anyway. The ones who don't often say they'll call the cops or phone company goons which is usually bull and they should be shot for lying. I've also heard about the evil Bell guys holding you down until cops arrive. I've never had a cop or Verizon guy or cop come and never talked to someone who has, but there are some stories... The only time you may get in trouble with a red box will be if a cop searches you and happens to be some born again Christian phreak trying to make the world a better place, and actually knows what the hell it is. I've heard of people being arrested for having red boxes and I believe some folks from 2600 did some time for it. This also isn't much to worry about and should be considered extremely rare, and if you are arrested you'll just brag about how elite you are anyway so don't worry, its win-win. Well, that's about all for now. I'll try to revise this as much as possible because I'm sure there are quite a few errors. I'd like to point out that most of the information in this article is NOT original, or at least not completely. I've changed many things and rewritten them to be easily understood. Also I'm fairly sure that some of the things that I think are original won't be, this seems to happen alot. You get an idea and found out someone allready thought. The first article I read on red boxing was the 3rd issue from phonelosers.org. I also got other assorted information from articles off antionline.com (they had a nice box archive) and a lot of the hallmark mods came from a text by Phakier Phreakey (go back and read some of those for newbies articles, you'd be surprised the subtle information buried in a few of them). I do not claim to have create very much of this, but I've written everything in this text from scratch and not plagarized, it does have a fair amount of good, original information, and I think its a damn good file. Please let me know of any errors or things you think should be included, send it meggito@dcap.org.