From: MERC::"uunet!csl.sri.com!risks" 9-MAR-1993 15:47:46.12 To: uunet!RISKS-LIST:;@csl.sri.com CC: Subj: RISKS DIGEST 14.38 Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 18:15:08 -0500 From: John Stoffel Subject: Cellular Phreaks & Code Dudes I picked up the premiere issue of a new magazine called "Wired" which is trying to spread the word about the Digital Revolution. And editorial blurb from the inside page is repeated here: ============ WHY WIRED? Because the Digital Revolution is whipping though our lives like a Bengali typhoon - while the mainstream media is still groping for the snooze button. And because the computer "press" is too busy churning out the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration of its ad sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of SOCIAL CHANGES SO PROFOUND their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire. There are a lot of magazines about technology. "Wired" is not one of them. "Wired" is about the most powerful people on the planet today - THE DIGITAL GENERATION. These are the people who not only foresaw how the merger of computers, telecommunications and the media is transforming life at the cusp of the millennium, they are making it happen. OUR FIRST INSTRUCTION TO OUR WRITERS: AMAZE US. Our second: We know a lot about digital technology, and we are bored with it. Tell us something we've never heard before, in a way we've never seen before. If it challenges our assumptions, so much the better. So why not now? Why "Wired"? Because in the age of information overload, THE ULTIMATE LUXURY IS MEANING AND CONTEXT. Or put another way, if you're looking for the soul of our new society in wild metamorphosis, our advice is simple. Get "Wired". -LR [jfs: Louis Rossetto] You can reach me at 415-904-0664 or lr@wired.com ================ Along with this they had an interesting article on "Cellular Phreaks and Code Dudes" by John Markoff (markoff@nyt.com), which discusses how the latest rage of Silicon Valley hackers is Cellular phones. He gives an example of how two phreaks hacked into an OKI 900 cellular phone and some of the features they discovered: o how to use it as a cellular scanner. o the manufacturer's interface so you can attach the phone to a portable computer. o one of the phreaks wrote some software to track other portable phones as they move from cell to cell, this allows him to display the approximate locations of each phone since he knows the geographical locations of each cell. o having the phone watch a specific number, and when that number is used, pick up and by using a simple sound activated recorder, you've made an instant bugging device! Maybe all the spies in Common Market who were worried about having point to point encryption on cellular phones didn't think of this trick? I found this article to be worth the cost of the magazine, as it ties in directly with RISKS readers here have been talking about. Now if it is this easy to hack this phone, how hard would it be to hack into the general cellular phone service machines, those that handle the passing of phones from cell to cell? The down side was the really annoying format, which seems to be "Techno-babble-obnoxious" with arbitrary changes in typeface, orientation, etc as you flip through pages. I felt that this detracted from the overall look of the information they were trying to present, making it harder to assimilate. I'd be interested in talking to anyone else who has read this magazine too. John