Cellular Phreaking :: essays research papers

Cellular PhreakingThe cellular/ expeditious mobilize system is one that is perfectly set up to beexploited by phreaks with the proper experience and equipment. Thanks toderegulation, the regional BOCs (Bell Operating Companies) are scattered and donot communicate much with each other. Phreaks can take advantage of this by pretense to be mobile phone customers whose "home base" is a city served by adifferent BOC, known as a " scouter". Since it is verbose for each BOC tokeep track of the customers of all the other BOCs, they will usually allow thecustomer to make the calls he wishes, often with a surcharge of some sort.The bill is so forwarded to the roamers home BOC for collection. However,it is fairly simple (with the correct tools) to create a bogus ID number foryour mobile phone, and pretend to be a roamer from some other city and state,thats " save visiting". When your BOC tries to collect for the calls from youralleged "home BOC", they will discover you are not a real customer but by then,you can create an entirely new electronic identity, and use that instead.How does the cellular system know who is calling, and where they are? When amobile phone enters a cells area of transmission, it transmits its phone numberand its 8 digit ID number to that cell, who will keep track of it until it getsfar enough away that the sound attribute is sufficiently diminished, and then thephone is "handed off" to the cell that the customer has walked or driven into.This process continues as long as the phone has force out and is turned on. If thephone is turned off (or the car is), someone attempting to call the mobile phonewill receive a recording along the lines of "The mobile phone customer you havedialed has left the vehicle or driven out of the service area." When a call ismade to a mobile phone, the slip equipment will check to see if the mobilephone being called is "logged in", so to speak, or present in one of the cells.If it is, the call will then act (to the speaking parties) just like a normalcall - the caller may hear a busy tone, the phone may just ring, or the call maybe answered.How does the switching equipment know whether or not a particular phone isauthorized to use the network? some times, it doesnt. When a dealer installsa mobile phone, he gives the phones ID number (an 8 digit hexadecimal number)