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Three Blind Phreaks
Post writes "'When they dial, they use the middle finger.' - Wired's story about three sightless brothers who 'have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision.'"
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Thats really cool. Reminds of the guy that first figured out that the Captain Crunch whistle exactly matched the long distance tones on the phone system.
The good ol' days when you could get long distance...
*sigh*
Exactly. I remember reading in either The hacker crackdown /that/ is impressive.
or Underground that there were some blind phreaks who had such a honed sense
of hearing that they could whistle tones more accuratly
than the teleco equipment. Now
you posted from the article, "They called secretaries and said, 'I need to get in to do a repair. You need to give me the number and password.' Sometimes they succeeded, or else they'd get only the number and try to break the password by using proprietary programs." sounds like normal boring phreakers to me. But they make news because they are blind. DAMNIT why could'nt I have been born blind so I could make the news!
The only advantage they have is being blind.
Being blind is not an advantage. If you think it is you are a damn fool. You have a pair of ears, becoming blind does not magically make your hearing better but reliance on hearing increases. Have you ever tried training hearing, if not then stop posting BS saying if you ask me, being blind only makes it easier for them to do these tricks, how about you sit down an hour a day and do some training? Better that than posting crap.
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
This is slightly off topic, but I feel that it's interesting and related none-the-less.
Several years ago, I used to be the primary admin/coder of a MUD(Multi User Dungeon{A game online...}). I was randomly watching people play, and I noticed that there was one player who had no "prompt(a status bar that you see after every action)". I questioned this player, as to why he didn't have one, and he went on to explain that he was completely blind, and it made his text-to-speech software go nuts, because it was far too much information, too quickly.
Anyhow, one day, he asked if he could help out with a little bit of coding...I was intrigued. I asked him to write me a small command, and he was done in about 30 minutes. I'll admit, I'm not the best coder in the world, but this was some of the cleanest code I had ever seen. A blind man named Dave(I think), was a better coder then most people I know... If that isn't inspiring, I don't know what is.
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
This sounds so familiar. While I'm not blind, but spastic, society treats you like you're some moron. Your esteem for other people kinda drops when you get treated like an idiot day in, day out. If you are able to convert your anger towards other people into something good, ie. acquiring skills, you definitely have an edge.
How you use your skills is another thing, but you generally don't respect the rules of society as much as you should because you feel society doesn't respect you as much as itt should.
1) First, hackers are heroes to the tech community. Actually, hackers are heroes in a all communities. Keaneu Reeves in the Matrix, Matthew Broderick in WarGames, Ed Furlong in T2, and the guys from Office Space. There is something about sticking it to the man through technology. One because you don't see the victim as you would when someone robs a liquor store, two because there is no physical violence, and three if its done against a major corporation then it's like they deserve it somehow. Plus there is the whole "concentrated gain, dispersed loss" thing For a big telco, three phreakers using free service does not dent their pocket book but certainly helps the attackers.
2) It's in a foreign country. Americans have a numbness to foreign pain. Look how the 20,000 large death toll from Iranian's earthquake did not rattle Americans. So when we hear about Israelis getting hacked by blind Palestinians we are equally passive, especially since many feel the Israeli's deserve it in someway.
3) Their blind and they're overcoming challenge.
"People said that God cursed our mother by giving her three blind sons," recalls Ramy. "Children beat us on the backs of our legs. Those abuses left scars on our hearts. But they also forced us to grow stronger."
When you hear that it cannot help but make you feel proud for these guys. Overcoming their obstacle of blindness is just amazing in general. It's a testament to human resilience and therefore the type of story that inspires hope--something much needed in our outsourcing-paranoid IT workers.
If these were, on the other hand, three blind robbers in San Francisco who stole purses from Old Grannies, yeah, this wouldn't get the same coverage.
Philosophistry
"Phreaking" was hacking with a cause. Nothing like Cyber (trolls) Hippies or some dipshit "community spirit". When I was a very young kid, my bluebox (R1) was was my ticket to ride. With all the people I met, I am what I am today. You'd never know in America (where I grew up) what a crock Vietnam was from the start, the "Cold War" was a farce, Nixon was a super crook and on and on. __People__ told me what the press dared not report!
Due to an obscure Federal law, it was a crime to get priviladged service from the only 'provider' there was then: Ma Bell. It never bothered me to break a stupid law and never at any time was using a circuit that would have been otherwise idle wrong. In the early days, it may have cost a few bucks to make an international call but times were to change, but the rates didn't reflect that.
Europe, 1989, and wow, its legal! Armed with the knowledge that a transAtlantic call cost about $0.05/min and the consumer was charged about $3.00/min brought a new cause. Here in Europe, we took it to the press and won our case. While we were paying a few cents a minute to call, Americans were still paying a few dollars. Yes, they made it somewhat illegal in 1993 but the battle was won and then and only then was it associated with a bunch of Amiga lamers and criminals that made one-trick boxes.
As a 'phreak' I applied what i knew about Unix and its rather crude scheduling at the time. Finding a new 'trick' was a treat. First one in a hacker, copycats, criminals. Like writing code, it can take allot of persistence. Often more as the only feedback was sound and ofcourse, social engineering. I took great pride in asking the switchman if he noticed me in his system and the answer always: "No". Those musical Amigas enevitably played at the wrong level was always a giveaway: You could hear the timbre of an Amiga in the crosstalk!
Except for possibly mobile phones, there is no reason to do this stuff today. Unix and Internet are more interesting anyways. Phreaking was my way in to the Unix crowd and all the hackers that make 'mousing arround' possible for so many today. And guess what: You sheep out there spam, flood, use html attachments and cause general mayhem for a system that is as fragile as the phone was in the past. Criminal I'm not. And you with your software out of a cerial box? Did it ever occur to you why commercial software is packaged like that?
Believe it, it takes alot of skill to twidle a call. It takes nothing to ruin the Internet and so many of you are doing it now. I'm very proud it did it and still benefit today by not doing it. It is nice to know if there is ever a war or situation that requires it, I can do it and with computers, so much more.
"Three Blind Mice", nice to hear the story again. Blind people can type and often run a Votrax (the real speech synthesiser) at 200 WPM or more. I'm sighted and can read alot faster than that, but most can't.