Memories of Blue b**ing

[Ray Norrish]

I Just read an old thread that mentioned BB and a load of old memories returned. Not just the BB, but all the old memories of US BBS and people I met then. I think of those times almost as the swan-song of my Amiga days (this was the early 90s) so it was the most remembered times for me.
Did you participate? What were your memories of the old BBS days?

[alexh]

Blue Boxing had come to an end by the time I got my modem in the early 90s. Most inband signalling on the BT network had gone. I remember being sent lists of freephone numbers (0800) for businesses that ran insecure internal PBX systems where you could dial in for free and (via a mechanism I don't remember) get an outside line to dial out international.

I never tried it. As I was too worried about getting caught.

The internet at home was just becoming big and UK ISPs appearing. By end of 1994 you could get all Amiga warez from the binary news groups using a local number to your ISP.

Modem was retired in 1998 as I went ADSL.

[xc8]

Not on BBoxing but I had epic times with BBS and outdials
Cool thing on some of them you could even get binaries -even from FTP- via the BBS's email -uuencoded of course.

+++
ATZ

[PatmanQC]

I started with the BBS with a 300 BAUD modem on my Commodore 64 in the 80s. Never had a blue box although I did read about them a lot back in the day. MCI codes Were also very prevalent back then as well

[alexh]

For a long time I used my terminal in the wrong mode and did not get the correct view.

People for years on the BBSs the Sysops had been drawing amazing colour pictures in ANSI and I'm looking them in B&W ASCII text. D'OH!

[XPD]

Originally Posted by alexh

Blue Boxing had come to an end by the time I got my modem in the early 90s. Most inband signalling on the BT network had gone. I remember being sent lists of freephone numbers (0800) for businesses that ran insecure internal PBX systems where you could dial in for free and (via a mechanism I don't remember) get an outside line to dial out international.

I never tried it. As I was too worried about getting caught.

The internet at home was just becoming big and UK ISPs appearing. By end of 1994 you could get all Amiga warez from the binary news groups using a local number to your ISP.

Modem was retired in 1998 as I went ADSL.

Similar experience here in NZ, I didnt use any of the PABX systems though, my father worked for Telecom NZ at the time so wouldn't have been a great look if I got caught

[ImmortalA1000]

My parents would never allow me to have a modem, I actually wanted the Compunet modem for my C64 but anything that connects to the telephone line was an instant "NO!" lol

[Lucidphreak]

why, so many years past the statute of limitations would you "hide" that you blue boxed?

to the person who mentioned X.25 outdials - hell yes! There was an added bonus to using outdials, you could use the hayes AT command for "redial" and often discover "systems" - both BBS's as well as vax/vms/unix/etc dialup systems. I found some super underground mega-leet phreak boards that way .. great memories. love finding threads like this.

[Ray Norrish]

Originally Posted by Lucidphreak

why, so many years past the statute of limitations would you "hide" that you blue boxed?

It was more of an wink call-back to the way people referenced their involvement.
No disrespect, but British irony is typically lost on Americans.

[project23]

One of the 'saddest' parts of growing up in the mid 90s was that although all these phreaking docs could certainly be found online - the information within was sorta just out of date.

If I recall you could, at one point, still call an international operator for a specific country. This was through a list of 0800's - one for each country. Some of these lesser developed countries still had the old signalling and could thus be seized. I think I did this once from home before hanging up, lol. I was a kid, what can i say?

Red boxing was dead, but you could still black-box. I opened up a green cab once, before shitting myself and closing it again, haha. I was like 12 i think? It was so enticing!

Oh I remember there were loads of company voicemail systems, again on 0800's. The default passwords for unusued boxes were well known, so these could be quite fun for sending c00l hax0r messages to your phreakin' friends!

Oh and finally, those beige/black COCOT phones you'd get in like restaurants and certain supermarkets etc. Payphones but not owned by the phone network? * # 2580 usually got you into 'admin' mode and then you could call the talking clock in japan to your hearts content, lol.

The internet was just becoming of interest out of academic circles i guess. Most game trading was done at copy parties, or if you were really special through bulletin boards.

By the time I was online in my own home - i guess 95? I had just switched to PC and everything changed SO fast, when you look back.

Fun memories.

[xc8]

Originally Posted by project23

Oh and finally, those beige/black COCOT phones you'd get in like restaurants and certain supermarkets etc. Payphones but not owned by the phone network? * # 2580 usually got you into 'admin' mode and then you could call the talking clock in japan to your hearts content, lol.
.

Now you mention 'payphones' , I had an operation at a hospital (not in UK) early 90s and one of those payphones was operated by a prepaid card, that time I read on some 'hack' documents that if you were quickly enough to pull out the card from the slot while on a call , you would not be charged.
Alas there was some kind of mechanism, sort of a 'pin', that blocked the card to be pulled out.
So I had the idea to 'cut' the card in such way like a "T" in order to partially move it at least away from the r/w head.

Thanks to social engineering I asked the ward's nurses to give me a knife just to eat some fruits , then I cut the card like a "T" shape and waited will the late hours, alas my plan did not go well...
the darn card STUCK in the slot - you can imagine my panic- , luckily with the help of that knife I managed to took out the card from the slot...

[project23]

Originally Posted by xc8

Now you mention 'payphones' , I had an operation at a hospital (not in UK) early 90s and one of those payphones was operated by a prepaid card, that time I read on some 'hack' documents that if you were quickly enough to pull out the card from the slot while on a call , you would not be charged.
Alas there was some kind of mechanism, sort of a 'pin', that blocked the card to be pulled out.
So I had the idea to 'cut' the card in such way like a "T" in order to partially move it at least away from the r/w head.

Thanks to social engineering I asked the ward's nurses to give me a knife just to eat some fruits , then I cut the card like a "T" shape and waited will the late hours, alas my plan did not go well...
the darn card STUCK in the slot - you can imagine my panic- , luckily with the help of that knife I managed to took out the card from the slot...

Hahaha awesome! Shame it didnt work for ya

[WayneK]

Originally Posted by xc8

Now you mention 'payphones' , I had an operation at a hospital (not in UK) early 90s and one of those payphones was operated by a prepaid card, that time I read on some 'hack' documents that if you were quickly enough to pull out the card from the slot while on a call , you would not be charged.
Alas there was some kind of mechanism, sort of a 'pin', that blocked the card to be pulled out.
So I had the idea to 'cut' the card in such way like a "T" in order to partially move it at least away from the r/w head.

Thanks to social engineering I asked the ward's nurses to give me a knife just to eat some fruits , then I cut the card like a "T" shape and waited will the late hours, alas my plan did not go well...
the darn card STUCK in the slot - you can imagine my panic- , luckily with the help of that knife I managed to took out the card from the slot...

This payphone story reminded me of a phonebox that was close to my high school, where there were 2 phones back-to-back - one was a normal coin-operated phone, the other one was BT phonecards only. Unfortunately for anyone with a BT phonecard in the area, if you picked up the normal handset and waited for someone to use a phonecard in the other phonebox, you could hear all the DTMF tones from the other line!


I definitely never did this, but I hypothetically imagine if you recorded this and played it back into a modem with DTMF tone recognition, you would have a large stash of BT phonecard numbers + PINs...