Nina Henderson
Imagine a computer hack. You’re probably picturing a shadowy figure in a balaclava, hunched over a computer screen filled with code straight out of The Matrix. That’s the image that comes to mind if you’re a stock photographer, at least.
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However, the reality is quite different. Most hacks involve a good deal of social engineering, where people are tricked into giving up their security details or money. Some hacks use malware, software that allows a hacker to access or control your device. And then, there are those that involve a whistle from a Cap’n Crunch cereal box.
Before the advent of mobile phones and Voice Over Internet Protocol, long-distance telephone calls were a luxury. They came with extra charges on top of the usual rates, a cost not everyone was willing to bear. This led to the rise of “phreakers”, individuals who manipulated phone company systems to make long-distance calls for free.
Old telephone systems were surprisingly easy to tamper with. When an operator (or later, individuals) dialed numbers, they would emit two tones corresponding to the number’s position on the dial pad. If you’re over 30, you’ll likely remember the distinctive sound these combined frequencies made.
You could simply record the necessary tones onto a cassette tape (think of a Spotify track you had to manually rewind with a pen) and play that tape down the phone line when you needed to use them.
“The phone company doesn’t care where the tones come from as long as it hears tones that it recognizes.”
Instead of taping the tones, you could replicate them with instruments. If you knew which tones to play, you could make unlimited free calls to any long-distance number. This is where Cap’n Crunch comes into the picture.
John Draper, a former US Air Force electronics technician and future computer programmer and hacker, discovered that the whistle toys found in Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes produced the perfect 2,600 hertz tone needed to hack the phone lines. He used these tones to make free phone calls over AT&T, and the whistles became a symbol in the phreaking community.
While it’s a charming image, stock photo photographers shouldn’t start featuring hackers blowing on slide whistles. It wasn’t long before hackers developed an automated system to replace the need for manually whistling a tune every time you wanted to make a call. Draper created a “blue box” device that could replicate phone company tones.
These boxes intrigued Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak during their college days. They built their own versions and sold them around UC Berkeley.
However, this innovation took away the charm of hacking phone calls using a cereal toy.
