The CSR came back on the line and was all over herself apologizing when she explained that there was something about her voice which caused their phone system to do funny things. Anyway, during the call I was surprised when I was temporarily cut off. John Draper was nick named Captain Crunch for making the whistle famous, but it has been. If one of the holes was blocked then it made a 2600 hertz tone that worked very similar to a blue box. What does this have to do with mobile phone CSRs? Well, interestingly I was on the phone with TMobile support, who really are a delightful bunch, somehow managing to be cheeful, friendly and helpful in the face of dealing with the general public. Cap'n Crunch Whistle was a cereal box toy that phone phreakers were able to use in their shenanigans. Interestingly, John Draper, a legendary hacking figure, somehow figured out that the plastic whistle that was packaged in some boxes of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal could be readily modified to produce a 2600 hz tone which could then be used to do interesting and illegal things to the phone system. As it turns out, 2600 comes from 2600 hz, the frequency of certain switching commands used by old AT&T (and other) switching systems to release trunk lines. If you are old enough, you may be tempted to believe that name has roots in the game console world with the Atari 2600, which for many was their first game machine after Pong. You may have seen 2600: The Hacker Quarterly at the news stand. This is in contrast to out of band signalling, a more secure approach where data and control are on different channels. This is where signals in the phone call itself were used to control the switching equipment. Simply blow the whistle into a telephone receiver and Open Sesame Ma Bell was yours. It so happened that the whistle emitted an audio tone at 2600 hertzthe precise frequency needed to imitate a telephone operator and take over a trunk line. One of the things that make phone phreaking, or hacking the phone system, possible was the use of in-band signalling. ThatвЂ™s when Draper discovered the CapвЂ™n Crunch BoвЂ™sun Whistle. He's huge on hugs and if you're a cute enough boy, you might even get one of his special 'energy transfer' massages! Turn-offs include cigarette smoke and food that requires chewing.In the good old days before computer hacking, malware, botnets and distributed denial of service attacks, there were things like ham radio and phone phreaking. In this new millenium, he has transformed himself into 'Johnny D', creepy old guy that you see at raves in California.

Life didn't go as well for Draper 1980 happened and he ceased doing anything interesting. Given the plans to the Blue Box, Wozniak improved them greatly and started selling them around campus, using a portion of the earned money to fund work that became Apple Computer. Draper, as he now resembles how Jim Henson would have looked if he'd lived a little longer and ceased taking any care of himself.ДЇor reasons that entirely escape logic, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple Computer) has always held a great amount of respect and honor for Draper, and first sought him out as a student in Berkeley in the 1970's. Ultimately, Draper went to federal prison three times related to phone fraud and other such charges. This propensity to snag the spotlight got John the first of several prison sentences because of the publication of an article called 'Secrets of the Little Blue Box', which was about a telephone device favored by Draper and others to fuck majorly with Ma Bell. Of course, Draper didn't actually discover that fact (the honor goes to a blind phone phreak named Joe Engressia) but he was quite happy to not go out of his way to correct people when they claimed he had. His 'handle' came from the inclusion of a plastic whistle in Captain Crunch cereal in the 1960's which could, with proper manipulation, send out a control tone that would affect telephone systems of the time. Rotten Library > Biographies > Hackers > Captain CrunchДЇormerly a Phone Phreak, now a dentally-challenged and odorous wreck, John Draper once gained fame (and prison sentences) from his skills in manipulating the telephone system.

Capn crunch whistle phone tone