If you thought phone phreaking was a dying art, you may be surprised to read the story of "Li'l Hacker", as told by old-school hack/phreaker Kevin Poulsen.
posted by Roach on Feb 29, 2008 - 11 comments

Three Blind Phreaks, See How They Scam ... The Badirs pulled off Mamet-worthy phone cons, employing cell phones, Braille-display computers, ace code-writing skills, and an uncanny ability to impersonate anyone from corporate suits to sex-starved females. On the phone, the brothers morph into verbal 007s, intimidating men, seducing women, and wheedling classified information from steely-voiced security personnel [...] An intense cat-and-mouse game developed: the Badirs on one side, with fraud investigator David Osmo and prosecutor Doron Porat on the other [...] his car's GPS system and email were repeatedly hacked. "There was a message waiting for him with his password in it," says Ramy, sounding quite pleased. "After that, he changed his password every hour before giving up on email altogether and using a typewriter."
posted by Blue Stone on Jan 30, 2004 - 7 comments

Joybubbles , aka Joe Engressia, is quite possibly the man who arguably first discovered blueboxing, the art of stuffing a 2600 Hz tone into a phone in order to make a free phone call, by blowing a Cap'n Crunch whistle.

I recently (re)discovered all this information after having a conversation about a guy in the phonebook who was listed as Joybubbles. I first heard about Joybubbles a number of years ago when I was involved in a local Ham Radio club, and we had to change the roster because the guy changed his name. He even answers his phone "Joybubbles". Thank you Google!
posted by manero on Nov 8, 2001 - 13 comments