What (who) is phreak - definition

STUDYING, EXPERIMENTING WITH, AND EXPLORING TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, OFTEN WITH THE GOAL OF MAKING FREE CALLS

Phreaker; Phone phreaking; Phreaks; Phreak; Phone Phreaker; Phone phreaker; Telephone hacking; Phreacking; Phone phreak; Australian Phreaking; Phone phreaks; Box (phreaking); Phone Phreaking

phreak

One who is enthusiastic about telephones.
Someone who wants to learn about a telephone network.
The telecom magazine featured a story written by a phreak.

phreaking

<jargon> /freek'ing/ "phone phreak" 1. The art and science of cracking the telephone network so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls. 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks). At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the "414 group" turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of "blue boxes" or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore. [Jargon File] (1994-11-09)

phreaking

¦ noun informal, chiefly N. Amer. the action of hacking into telecommunications systems, especially to obtain free calls.

Derivatives

phreak noun

phreaker noun

Origin

1970s: alt. of freaking by assoc. with phone.

Wikipedia

Phreaking

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.

The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the phone handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world. To ease the creation of these tones, electronic tone generators known as blue boxes became a staple of the phreaker community. This community included future Apple Inc. cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

The blue box era came to an end with the ever-increasing use of computerized phone systems which allowed telecommunication companies to discontinue the use of in-band signaling for call routing purposes. Instead, dialing information was sent on a separate channel which was inaccessible to the telecom customer. By the 1980s, most of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) in the US and Western Europe had adopted the SS7 system which uses out-of-band signaling for call control (and which is still in use to this day). Phreaking has since become closely linked with computer hacking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking