Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!telecom From: telecom@ucbvax.ARPA Newsgroups: fa.telecom Subject: TELECOM Digest V4 #200 Message-ID: <8092@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 18:31:39 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8092 Posted: Wed Jun 12 18:31:39 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 23:42:24 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 187 From: Jon Solomon (the Moderator) TELECOM Digest Wed, 12 Jun 85 17:28:24 EDT Volume 4 : Issue 200 Today's Topics: Administrivia - TELECOM is moving Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #199 Need help stopping telephone harrassment RFI Interference and 1200-bps Modems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Jun 85 17:24:15 EDT From: Jon Solomon Subject: Administrivia - TELECOM is moving To: telecom@bbncca.arpa TELECOM is moving from its current address on BBNCCA to MIT-XX. The pointer on MIT-MC will reflect this change, and so will the BBNCCA (or any BBN unix system) pointer, but if you use some other pointer it might not work. TELECOM-REQUEST@MIT-XX and TELECOM@MIT-XX have been created. The software is not completely ready to support generating digests so if you do send mail to MIT-XX right now, I will probably forward it to BBNCCA and continue to process TELECOM from there. Watch for the new location in the header of the digest, and when it is ready I will send out another administrivia note. If you send something to either address and you don't see it in three days time published in the digest, please resend the mail. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 Jun 85 19:38:49 edt From: Michael Grant To: TELECOM@BBNCCA Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest V4 #199 Regarding privacy on cellular phones, I'd be interested to hear about the new digital coding techniques that the cellular phone companies are talking about adding soon. They say that it would be an additional plug in module to the already existing units. Would it be possible to overhear a key, and decode a conversation? What kind of encoding would they be doing? -Mike ------------------------------ Date: Thursday, 6 June 1985 05:55-MDT From: Donn Seeley Subject: Need help stopping telephone harrassment I have a friend (who shall remain nameless, for reasons that will become obvious below) who has been subjected to some very sophisticated telephone harrassment. He doesn't have net access and has asked me to try to use some of the immense combined experience of the net to help him get to the bottom of his problems. My friend has a son of high school age who likes to play with computers. The family has an Apple computer and a modem at home, and the son uses it to dial in to various bboards in the area of his suburban home in California. It seems that one day the son attempted to bluff his way onto a phone phreak bboard. This was a mistake -- the boy was in way over his head, and when the bboard operators learned this, they decided to teach him a lesson. My friend's long distance access code very rapidly propagated around the state and some ridiculous charges began appearing on his monthly bills. At the same time he began receiving harrassing phone calls -- the phone would ring during dinner or in the middle of the night, and when someone answered it, no one would be on the other end. After a couple months of this, my friend asked Pac Tel to trace the harrassing phone calls. The nature of the calls changed; perhaps the son bragged about it to classmates or acquaintances on bboards, but the bad guys heard about it and the callers began to say things. They said that they would vandalize my friend's property and that they would assault his son, and eventually they began making death threats. Pac Tel stalled on the traces; in the end they said that they couldn't release the information that they had gathered because regulations required that at least three of the calls had to originate from the same number, and somehow this was not the case. My friend was puzzled about the rule, but he was even more puzzled about the fact that the calls seemed to come from different numbers... He and his family began to get rather nervous, although the violence remained verbal. My friend decided to do some investigating of his own and called up some of the numbers that appeared on his long distance bill. Many of them turned out to be recordings of various kinds, such as 'dial-a-porn'; a few of them turned out to be homes with teenagers, and the latter readily admitted that they had been given the access code and told to 'get this guy', and to spread the number far and wide. Since it was clear that the original perpetrators could not be traced through the long distance company, my friend changed his access code and managed to convince the company to forgive the bogus charges. Following this move the problems with long distance went away. At about this time the harrassing phone calls stopped too. My friend isn't sure whether this was a result of the bad guys hearing about his investigation through the grapevine, or whether Pac Tel was getting warm, but he was grateful regardless. Unfortunately this wasn't the end of his problem. When he got his phone bill at the end of the month, he discovered that he was being charged for hundreds of dollars worth of bogus toll calls through Pac Tel, all made in his local area code. Apparently all of the many numbers called were recordings, so there was no one on the other end who could be asked about the calls. Pac Tel said that the calls originated from his residential phone, but it was quite clear that no one in the household could possibly be doing it. The family kept logs of where all its members were for periods of weeks at a time, and these showed that the calls were being made when the house was empty, or when the family was eating dinner and so on. Peculiarly, some of the numbers were called as many as 8 times in a single minute, which suggested that the caller was using an auto-dialer (my friend does not own one) and that the calls were being made to accumulate charges rather than to listen to the recordings. On the basis of this evidence Pac Tel traced the house's local loop, but could find no indication that it had been compromised in any way. Pac Tel now steadfastly maintains that there is no other way of making a call appear to originate from the residence's phone. After several months of wrangling, Pac Tel sent its own investigator to look at the case. After one phone call to my friend and three days of 'investigation', Pac Tel's man announced that my friend's son was responsible for all the calls, and that my friend was liable for the thousands of dollars worth of bogus calls that had been made over the previous eight months. My friend, at his wits' end, tried contacting the FBI. They heard him out and told him that because none of the bogus calls at any stage of the case had crossed state lines, they had no jurisdiction. (My friend's heart sank when he realized that that the bad guys must have thought of this in advance...) The FBI suggested that my friend call the PUC. This turned out to be a joke -- my friend couldn't even get past the secretary. My poor friend is now at the stage of hiring a lawyer and preparing for the inevitable... Meanwhile the bogus calls continue, taunting him. My friend and I can use any information you might have on how a stunt like this could be perpetrated -- how can you make calls appear to come from another number? We don't need or want precise details on how to beat the system; we just need enough to convince Pac Tel (or (sigh) a judge) that there is an alternative explanation for the calls... Any help you can give would be deeply appreciated, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn PS -- If you have something you'd prefer to communicate in person, and you'll be attending the Usenix conference, by all means contact me there. ------------------------------ Date: Monday, 10 June 1985 11:32-MDT From: Bob Russes Subject: RFI Interference and 1200-bps Modems *** HELP! *** I need advice in selecting a 1200-bps modem. I need a modem which is able to withstand the RFI interference from a 50,000 watt AM broadcast station which is located approximately 1-2 miles from my home. I currently have a Digital DF03 modem for use at home. However, given the amount of RFI interference at my location, it is effectively useless. Any suggestions would be **greatly** appreciated!! Should you need any other information, please ask! Bob Usenet: decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-argus!russes USPS: Bob Russes Telephone: (617)-467-8365 Digital Equipment Corporation 67 Forest Street -- IND-3/C10 Marlboro, MA 01752-9116 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest ******************************