Fergie's Tech Blog

Blue Boxing Comes to VoIP

Kevin Poulsen writes on 27B Stroke 6:

In a delightful bit of retro engineering, veteran phone hacker Mark "Phiber Optik" Abene has written a module for the Asterisk open source telephone switch that replaces its fancy schmancy digital signaling with good old fashioned in-band MF.

Mark demonstrated the Project MF module at the HOPE hacker's conference in New York last month. He says he built a 1980s-style blue box the day before the conference, then took the stage and made a call to his Asterisk machine, blew the trunk with a blast of 2600 hz -- from a Cap'n Crunch whistle, no less -- and boxed a new call with the sweet, sonorous tones of multi-frequency signaling.

"The crowd went wild," Mark says in an e-mail. "I'm trying to encourage more people to set up their own 'switches' that we can all blue box off of."

Oooh. I'm getting all tingly.

posted by Fergie @ 8/14/2006 12:13:00 PM