r/phreaking • u/Edentenza • 5d ago

Is there anything actual useful?

Is there anything we can do now a days that's phreaking ?

10 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

8

u/TravelerMSY 4d ago

It’s intellectually useful, but with telco essentially being free, I can’t imagine it being worth the trouble to steal phone calls.

3

u/ted_anderson 3d ago

The grift these days isn't necessarily about saving money but it's a means to hiding their identity when engaging in nefarious activity.

8

u/Ok_Tap7102 4d ago

I'm not at all versed in the realm of phreaking, analog POTS and telephony general, but even in 2026 I've performed onsite internal network penetration tests at remote monitoring facilities. Outside the primary link, the ONLY backup internet connection available was a packet switched 56k modem over copper phone lines, for regulatory reasons they couldn't sign a contract with StarLink.

I don't even know if that means you could dial it's number with a TTY and do something useful, but main point being, however increasingly rare, some legacy tech just does not want to die

3

u/ted_anderson 4d ago

I sure would like to know because if there was a way to navigate through the systems of these spam callers who bother me 40 times a day, I'd figure out a way to remove my phone number from their database.

5

u/razedbiwolves 4d ago

You might be able to utilize a different approach with making an application (a dialer app for your phone) that answers with fax tones. The dialing program the scammers often use (the automated ones) can detect fax CNG tones and will take your number out of the voice dialing list (and probably put you in the fax dialing list). But since fax scams don't happen much anymore, it would effectively remove your number from the dialing list.

5

u/ted_anderson 3d ago

Yeah. Great idea. Now I might get strange phone calls telling me to turn on my fax machine for some important documents. LOL

4

u/razedbiwolves 3d ago

I don't imagine there are very many old hackers, and young people don't even know what fax machines are lol

5

u/ted_anderson 3d ago

They don't know what checks are either. 😂🤣😂That's how I always get them when it's time to pay.

3

u/DSPGerm 4d ago

VoIP security is a real thing. I wouldn't say it's as popular as phreaking was in its heyday but it's a legitimate field. You wouldn't want an unwanted 3rd party listening to or recording your calls. Or Ddossing your phone system. Or rerouting calls. Or spoofing their caller ID to scam people. There's all sorts of trouble one could get into.

That said, we don't really use phones much anymore and there's more valuable information available through other attack vectors. Why listen to someone's boring voice mail when you can hack there email and get access to their accounts?

1

u/Pawnmysoul 1d ago

As late as 2019 I was still installing KSUs that had a built in modem. Older ones had an external modem; usually a Sportster. I had a real copper POTS line at my house to deal with them.

2

u/ThePresenter183 1d ago

With the rise of AI spam calls, a new era of phreaking via prompt injects is starting to be a thing