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From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Reprogramming
Message-ID: <6382@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 14 Apr 90 04:00:00 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 253, Message 9 of 9


There is no legitimate reason for a user to change the serial number
identification of his unit. There are legitimate reasons to be able to
change the phone number and Home Default, to name two options.

Consider this: If I travel frequently between two or three cities, and
I use cellular service in each, my options now are to have two or
three phones (one homed in each city), or have one home city and pay
(sometimes) outrageous roaming rates in the other two cities, or pay a
dealer to reprogram the unit for another city as its home in the event
I have an actual number there.

Why can't I subscribe to cellular service (and have an actual phone
number) in each city I routinely visit, with the numbers going to
voice mail when I am not in town?  When my plane lands, I, (me, myself
rather than a dealer) reprogram the phone to let's say home on 00020
for Ameritech/Chicago or 00001 for Cellular One/Chicago. I put in the
phone number I am paying for in this city, and proceed to do business
with my (now) home carrier. The carrier already has my serial number,
of course, since they got that when I first signed up for service in
their city.  

Instead of roamer rates, I get home carrier rates. Why do I have to go
to a dealer for that?  Why would 'chaos' result from this any more
than it results from me moving my landline phone from one apartment to
another and plugging it in the jack?  Why did the telcos replace
hardwired phones with modular jacks if they were worried about chaos?
 
People with the knowledge of how to defraud the cellular carrier are
probably the same people who -- if they live in an older, rapidly
decaying inner city area like myself -- also know how to go to the
basement of their apartment building and snatch the pairs for anyone
in the building and half the people on the same block. Should I be
forced to live with a hardwired phone and a terminal box I can't get
into merely because I *might* put calls on your line?  Should I have
to call telco installation if I want to move the wires from one place
to another on my premises for the same reason? Does chaos result when
people run new wires from the telco demarc to their apartment? 

If anything, cellular service is more secure than landline simply
because unlike the wire pair, the cellular equivalent of the pair (the
serial number) is virtually unchangeable. Program whatever phone
number you like; if the ESN does not match -- at least in local
service -- the call won't go through. I agree there are some problems
with the absolute use of the serial number as the identification of
last resort when roaming, but this is gradually being corrected by
most carriers.  Unlike what Geoff Goodfellow said in his article on
cellular security (see TELECOM Archives), the manufacturers now are
really keeping the serial number very secure. The chip is buried under
wax on my unit, for gosh sakes!  And even if it were not, would YOU
want a bunch of ostentatious dip-switches or micro-toggle switches on
your unit to show what you were up to?  

A hard-core phreak can/will break into anything telecom-related. But
the honest cellular user should be able to adjust his phone for the
city he is in and carrier he is using in the same way a subscriber of
regular telco services picks up his phone, carries it across town and
plugs it in right away. If I go to New York or Boston, and have a
hardwired phone installed, I don't have to pay special 'roamer' rates,
nor do I have to pay an installer to put the phone in to insure I
don't cheat New York Tel of their due. 

Of course, if there were detailed, descriptive messages here in the
Digest explaining how to do it model by model, it would only be a
short time until some nitwit at the [New York Times] ran an article
headlined 'Northwestern University computer used by phreaks to steal
cellular phone service.'  Mark my words.  Or else one of television's
Talking Heads; I call them the men with the fifty dollar hairdoos and
the fifty cent brains. I have limited financial resources: I cannot
afford a lawyer, and the cost of bribing a federal judge or the FBI
here in Chicago is more expensive than a lot of places.

I see nothing wrong with messages regarding topics such as the four or
five digit carrier identification numbers; how Access, Group and Class
values are assigned; or how Overload is handled. But let's keep quiet
about the actual keyboard sequences typed in to enter program mode,
eh?  Either you know them or you don't.  I haven't been in jail for so
long I've forgotten what a Bologna sandwich tastes like. I'd like to
keep it that way.


Patrick Townson