22 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
22 lines
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
phreaking
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/freeking/ , n. [from phone phreak ] 1. The art and science of cracking the
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phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By
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extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not
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exclusively, on communications networks) (see cracking ). At one time
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phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a
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gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of
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exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was
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significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone
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phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as
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the legendary TAP Newsletter. This ethos began to break down in the
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mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of
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less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network
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made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so
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phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing
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phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the 414 group
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turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually
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just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of
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blue boxes or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
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