Cats and Mice: The Phone Company, the FBI, and the Phone Phreaks

Presented at The Next HOPE (2010), July 18, 2010, noon (60 minutes).

Ever since the first blue box arrest in 1961, the telephone company, the FBI, and the phone phreaks engaged in a long-running game of cat and mouse. This talk explores the moves and countermoves between the two sides from 1960 to 1980, covering advances in phreaking - new ways to hack the phone system and evade detection - as well as advances in finding and prosecuting those pesky phone phreaks. Based on exclusive interviews with phreaks, FBI agents, and telephone company security officers for his forthcoming book on the history of phone phreaking, Phil will focus on some of the more dramatic battles between the two sides that occurred during the heyday of analog phone phreaking, including the 1962 Harvard “spy ring,” a certain well-known phone phreak’s wiretapping of the FBI in 1975 (yes, you read that right), and the hacking of the military’s AUTOVON telephone network in the mid-1970s.

Presenters:

• Phil Lapsley
  Phil Lapsley has spent the last several years documenting the history of phone phreaking, through hundreds of interviews and Freedom of Information Act requests. He has been interviewed by National Public Radio and the BBC and quoted in multiple newspapers, including The New York Times, on the topic. He has also presented on phone phreaking history at the 10th Annual Vintage Computer Festival and The Last HOPE. When not researching phreaking, Phil has tried to act like an upstanding member of society. He cofounded two high technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked for McKinsey and Company, a management consulting company that advises Fortune 100 companies on business strategy. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer sciences from U.C. Berkeley and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He codeveloped Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP, RFC 977) used in the USENET news system. He is also the author of one textbook, 17 patents, and numerous technical articles.

Links:

• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Next Hope (2010)/The Next HOPE (2010) - Cats and Mice - The Phone Company, the FBI, and the Phone Phreaks.srt (subtitles)
• https://infocon.org/cons/2600/The Next Hope (2010)/The Next HOPE (2010) - Cats and Mice - The Phone Company, the FBI, and the Phone Phreaks.mp4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrlDop5aWVU

Tags:

• Phreaking

Similar Presentations:

• The Last HOPE (2008) / The History of Phone Phreaking, 1960-1980
• HOPE Number Six (2006) / Phone Phreaking 101
• HOPE Number Nine (2012) / Phone Phreak Confidential: The Backstory of the History of Phone Phreaking