• Mobile-Phone-Based Wireless Bug: Written by Adam
• Snuffing Out the Magic Lantern: Written by Rob T Firefly
• Prank Phone Calls: Written by CatClawChica (Nathalie Yaqueline Chica)
• Easy Fun With Phones: Written by TeLePhEd2600
• Neo Redbox - A Working Redbox: Written by George W Bush
• Hacker Cinema II: Electric Boogaloo: Written by Rob T Firefly
• Wireless Beige Box: Written by Captain B
• Letters to UPL: Written by viewers like YOU!

Mobile-Phone-Based Wireless Bug Written by Adam

I re-invented the cell phone into a bug. Here is how it works. First off, go out and buy a prepaid cellular phone from your local drugstore or walmart for about $60 - $70 . Now you need to buy a hands-free earphone with mic made for cell-phones (usually costs about $10). Now go home and activate the call phone by calling the toll free number on the box and giving them the bull info to get your line running. Now charge up the phone for a couple of hours. Plug in the handsfree plug to the phone and go into the settings menu of the phone. You will find a setting in there for auto answer (the phone will answer by itself without pressing send when it rings, this is made to work only with handsfree sets.) Now turn the ringer off in the menu settings. If you can not turn it off for some reason, then put it to vibrate, but I did not ever see a phone that the ringer could Funally, wrap the phone in plastic sandwich wrap to sort of waterproof it, do not cover the antenna though , make sure you can pull it out. Now you are ready to bug anyone you want and if you still have not figured it out, lemme explain further....

Say you want to bug your girlfriend's house to see what guys she is calling, or even having over when you are not around.. Well, go over to see her, with this cellphone you just configured and find the nearest flowerpot or someplace like behind a dresser near where she uses her home phone to talk to those other guys. So now you have found the flowerpot..so now you have to dig a hole into the dirt and hide the phone in the dirt so that the only thing sticking out just a little bit is the antenna and the mic part of the little handsfree headset.(there is no way in hell that she will see this as both the antenna and the mic are black and the dirt in the flowerpot is black as well. Now when you leave her place and call your cellphone bug from your place or anywhere for that matter in the world, the phone will answer itself after the secont ring and you will be listening to everything going on in the room that you planted the bug in. When you are done listening, just hang up and call back whenever you want to listen again. The battery on most new phones usually lasts a good 4 days to a week in some cases, depending on usage, so you got a good few days of entertainment lined up for you.

Adam.

Snuffing Out the Magic Lantern Written by Rob T Firefly

(Ed. Note:  This article was written well before H2K2, and I unfortunately missed Rudy Rucker's Magic Lantern panel there.  So, I apologize if any information is duplicated here, it's a total coincidence.)

There's been lots of talk about an addition to the FBI's happy Carnivore family, a keylogger called Magic Lantern.  Apparently, Magic Lantern is a hidden keylogger deployed, trojan-style, by the FBI for the single purpose of capturing suspects' passwords and passphrases.  This solves the nagging problem of encryption.  Of course, keyloggers are nothing new to the surveillance world, and people need to know what they can do about them.

For our purposes we will assume you are an average loser infected by a keylogger, whether it's the FBI trying to Magic Lantern you, your school trying to sniff out the next Columbine, or your mom trying to catch you looking at your porn.  These aren't any smashing new super-hacker escapes, mind you.  Any fool could think of these, and they've been around for ages.

Let's take care of your passwords and passphrases.  You need to type these to get into your own stuff, right?  How can you avoid them being keylogged? Just get one which you DON'T type.  Use something like a text file, where you can copy text with the mouse, and paste it into your password window. Click, drag, click, no keystrokes.  What to use?  Try going onto Usenet and downloading a random message which contains a binary.  Save and view the post as a text file, so you get to see all the cool source code whether it be base64, UUE, or even that new-fangled yEnc jazz the kids seem to like nowadays.  So, you've got several pages of random text from which to choose a password.

All you have to remember is which line, which column, and how long your chosen text is.  Good old DOS Edit displays your current line and column, as do some other word crunchers.  This method has the added bonus of giving you a password which would be extremely hard for someone to guess, and take ages to brute-force.

If you're not into random code, you can use any number of other things which will seem innocuous enough to an observer, but which make halfway decent password nests.  Movie scripts, books from Project Gutenberg, software manuals, gameshark codes from gameFAQs, old Phrack issues from way back when Phrack was fun to read, that old weird Power Rangers fan-fiction where the Pink Ranger gets tortured, raped, and killed, or any other long text file you can pick and choose from when needed will do.

As a further precaution, you'll want to open the file in question by pointing and clicking through Windows Explorer, or My Computer, or something rather than typing out the file's location in the Start menu or whatever.

So, what if you think you may be under the influence of a keylogger, and want to get rid of it?  Well, if you're in Windows, you can restore your system configuration from a backup you should have made before you were infected.  This'll be helpful, since keyloggers need to insinuate themselves into your system registry and/or config files in order to work.

To backup in Win9x, you have a program called msconfig.exe which has a "Create Backup" button.  Hit this and your config.sys, autoexec.bat, System.ini, and win.ini files will be backed up as .pss files in their directories.  Then start regedit.exe and, under the "registry" menu, export your entire registry file to a text file.  Now keep these exports somewhere safe, and you can re-import them to turn the clock back should you ever get infected in the future.  There are also numerous third-party programs that will take and manage system snapshots for you.  My personal favorite is called Configsafe Autocheck, which came with a new PC long ago.  In Windows Me/2K/XP, the backup utility is in Start menu/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore.

If anyone knows of equivalent utilities for other operating systems, please throw us an email.

That about wraps this up.  One final note of interest is the fact that the antivirus boffins over at Symantec and McAfee have decided to let their software ignore the Magic Lantern virus.  This might be a good time to start doing your antivirus shopping outside the USA.

Prank Phone Calls Written by CatClawChica (Nathalie Yaqueline Chica)

(1)
You: Hello?
Dumbfuck: Hello?
You: Is Chief Red Foot there?
Dumbfuck: Uh, no.
You: Are you sure? When will he be back in?
Dumbfuck: Uh, he doesn't live here.
You: Oh, well in that case I need to speak to (name of actual person whom the number belongs to), he said that you were helding a special ceremony on Bird Day, do you have to R.S.V.P. ???
Dumbfuck: Uh, I don't know what the fuck your talking about. Please don't call here anymore.
You: So your not doing it anymore? Where's Princess Bird Beak Bitch?
Dumbfuck: Look you dumb Indian stop fucking with the phone!

(CLICK)

(2)
You: (old lady voice): Hi! Mildrid! Oh, I'm so sorry I haven't talked to you in years...I just left for college and every thing went blank!
CherryPopper: Hi, um I don't think this is who you're looking for.
You: How about me and you go out to dinner at the café by the river like we used to do when we were younger?
CherryPopper: Look Lady I don't know you!
You: How could you say that! Mildrid!
CherryPopper: I AM NOT MILDRID!!!!!!

(CLICK)

(3)
You: Hello, this is bitch enterprise, Jeremy/Sandra, speaking, I would like to conduct a survey according to your terms.
NastyFucker: About what?
You: It's about the amount and the brand and how you use your condomns.
NastyFucker: Uh.....
You: Don't worry it's totally confidential we only have one person from the public listening in one your line....and that person is in charge of unofficial public relations.
NastyFucker: Okay.
You: What brand do you use of condomns?
NastyFucker: Uh....None of your business!

(CLICK)

(4)
You: Hello this is Dr. Merbot from NJ (or other state but it has to be far away), I'm calling to speak to Ms.Jenkins about her circumcision.
DumbCrap: Ew! Uh... no one lives here by that name.
You: Oh, I'm so sorry did I freak you out? Well, there are more grosser things you get to do and see when you're a doctor.... For example liposuction...seeing all the greasy water and pus being evacuated from perfect model's bodies.
DumbCrap: Uh! Gross! Do you even know where you're calling!
You: No but I like to operate on people!
DumbCrap: Eeww!

(CLICK)

(5)
You: (Chinese Accent): Hey you! You bitch! Why you order take out and no pay for? Eh?
AmericanShitHead: What? I didn't order any take out!
You: Yes you did fuck head...I can hear you munching on the pork fried rice...which has piss in it by the way!
AmericanShitHead: Ew! Gross! I'm not even eating any thing right now!
You: I send police to you house right now! Stupid Bitch Heads, think you can get away with eating all the fortune cookies, think again!
AmericanShitHead: ??????

(CLICK)

These are perfect examples of prank phone calling. Remember....

1. Always use *67 if calling from your own home.
2. Never state your actual name.
3. Don't give out any information.
4. If they tell you they are going to call the doughnut eaters on you...only call back twice.
5. If they curse you out, make them look stupid.
6. If police are sent to your home....claim someone was beige boxing you....i.e..... Go outside and unscrew your Telephone Network Interface box and make it look like some one was there.
7. Remember to clear the redial button.
8. I advice you to go beige boxing to do prank phone calls because it's more effective...you won't get caught easily... although I don't know about getting caught beige boxing...that's different. (Beige Boxing is explained in a previous UPL issue.)
9. Your victims can always press *57.... (Service that tracks down your number and stores it for police use). If they press it more than once on you...your done for... if they call the police...your number can be easily (123) traced.
10. If people keep on calling back (for some reason they know your number), then I recommend not to disconnect the phone...but to use the busy box....it makes all the phone in your house think they are on hold and when a person calls in...they hear it busy. How to make one is explained in a previous issue of UPL.

Easy Fun With Phones Written by TeLePhEd2600

Ok let me start of by saying this is the first time i have wroten anything about phreaking (other then a science research project a got an a+ on and turned the teacher into a phreak) so if my writing style is kinda bad, please feel free to get molested by a preist.

Ok first off, deffinetly my favorite is calling your friends at school when there i class. If your school is like mine, you call up and you get a menu, enter yor partys extension now, stay on the line for assistance, or press * for a list of extensions. Well you dial the extension of the room your friend is in and when the teacher picks up, say this is the office and you need to speak to so and so. The next time you decided to stay home and do this, i called all my friends up and told the teachers that they were needed in the office. When they get down there the office says "well i didnt call you down so go back up." After doing this once you have them called down to different places every period, nurse, guidance, ect. But your smart so you will proabably figure out some even funner stuff to do.

Now, i have noticed a lot of people writing simple little tutorials on hacking p.a. systems which usually go somthing like this: call up a store say your so and so in electronis and you forgot the extention for the p.a. and ask to be transfered. Well folks i have tried this and iam sorry to say most of the time it doesnt work. After saying somthing similar to what i wrote above, you will be asked somthing along the lines of, "sir what store number are you calling from?" because they know that the call is not coming from inside the store. To remedy this ask to be transfered to electronics or somthing. Dont say you work there. Once transfered then say "Damnit, i forgot the extension for the p.a. can you please transfer me?" This will usually work unless you get a bitch secretary and she wont transfer you.

This one is great for getting a reaction out of the operators. Go to a payphone or use your home phone. Dial 0 and when you get an operator ask to be transfered to repair. After you get to repair say "may i  please speak to a linesman?" 9 out of 10 times there is no linesman there. But you can still have fun. after the operator says theres no linesman here say "oh then maybe you can help me, I was wondering if you could explain to me  why a bluebox wont work anymore." After that they say somthing like "Sir i dont know what that is." Now tell them just what a blue box is and the secound they here free long distance they will ask "Were is this blue box?!" Tell them you dont have one (especially if your calling from a home phone.) They'll then tell you that they really cant help you. The conversation usually ends there but its always fun to see what they say.

And finally, this isnt very fun but its somthing i beleive MUST be done. We need phone phreaks on the inside. Phone phreaks willing to go out and work for the phone company. Lets face it us phreaks could really use the inside info, our blue boxes wont work anymore, neither will or redboxes (kinda) With new information on the phone system maybe we could find a way to bring our lovely little blue boxes back. Now iam only 14 so i cant really get a job as a linesman, but iam sure some phreaks out there will answer the call and get us all the manuals and inside info we need.

Neo Redbox - A Working Redbox Written by George W Bush (as posted to alt.phreaking)

Neo, like new. Like... whoa!™

I am drastically saddened at the loss of AT&T's ACTS system. Infact, I am so distraught that I've spent these last months since the removal of ACTS developing a new technique to obtain free telephone calls from payphones.

The methods I shall describe will work on any payphone anywhere, as long as it is attached to the the PSTN.

This is a revolutionary breakthrough of materialistic coupling. Please continue to read.

For this scheme to work properly you shall need to obtain the following materials:

• 2  Funnels
• 1  Length of rubber tubing
• 1  8 Ohm speaker
• 4  Long wires
• 2  Radio Shack digital recorders ($9 recorders in the parts section)
• 2  9 Volt batteries for the recorders.
• 1  Can of Red Dog beer (or any beer, it doesn't matter)

And last yet not least, a WAV file of a KP2 tone which is a Bluebox tone. You can find the KP2 tone on the net fairly easily, just search for it.

! Construction !

Attach the batteries to the recorder, and record the KP2 tone onto each recorder.

Attach the tubing to each funnel so that it fits snugly.

Attach two wires to each side on the 8 ohm speaker. You may attach them with anything except they must contact the terminals on the speaker.

Unplug each battery from each recorder. Now, place the + (positive) wire from the speaker on the + of one battery and then snap the clip back onto the battery.

Next, perform the same actions with the other battery.

Your Neo RedBox is almost complete. Just a few finishing touches and you shall be powerful enough to steal telephone calls.

Take the recording contraption you had just wired, your funnel contraption and the can of RedDog beer to your favorite payphone. Lift the receiver and attach one funnel to the mouthpiece and place the receiver on the phone.

Push the speaker into the funnel that is left over, and press the play buttons on each recorder.

What this is doing is setting the alkaline levels of the telephones internal 36 volt dry-cell battery. The KP2 tones tell the telephones computer to ground your connection.

You must now dial 10-10-2880 which is AT&T. Once you've dialed that you should type in your phone number.

Now remove the recorders and put them into your pocket. Pop open the can of Red Dog beer and when the operator appears on the line, pour the can into the funnel so that the beer enters the tubing and contacts the microphone of the telephone handset.

Place your ear closely to the earphone. Does the operator appear drunk yet? If not, you must blast her with a few KP2 tones to stirr up her alcohol levels.

Once she is completely drunk, you must mesmerize her.

"Dear wonderful madame, I truly adore your 1950's garb. Perhaps I shall take you to my mansion in the hills this weekend where we may endulge in French chocolates and southern moonshine.  Would you mind kindly completing my call, my darling?"

She will say "Yes dear, anything for you, mmmm."

And there you have it. The Neo RedBox.


! How and why it works !


The Red Dog beer completes grounding the electromechanism and actually inducts the beer into the telephone wires. Red Dog because it's red, but also contains harsh chemical matter which make fusing any two objects together completely possible.

The beer through the telephone works much like quantum teleportation, the atomic structure of the beer is broken down and then reproduced at the operators side.

AT&T operators ar forced to wear full head operators helmets. So therefore if any liquid enters the helmet, she must drink it since they do not have release valves and thier poor heads are entombed with a 1 gauge width titanium locking device.

Quickly reading a survey conducted in 1992 by James Earl Jones, I've discovered that 99.9% of AT&T operators become tipsy after only one brew.

Finally, the reason we must dial the 10-10-2880 number first is due to the fact that when this number is dialed, the internal payphone alarms are disabled. This also connects us to the operator in whom we wish to drink under the operators console.

Have fun and practice safe lushing. Please remember if you are an underage drinker (or in need of Red Dog) some old woman or man will gladly buy your body for a case of beer. Sit out infront of the Liqour store spread-eagle until one starts grasping your areas ludely.

Thank you for reading. Goodnight.

Hacker Cinema II - Electric Boogaloo Written by Rob T Firefly

Hello again!  It's time for another chapter in UPL's guide to hacker-related cinema.  There are a few flicks I left out last issue, and some more that have come out since then.  Please continue to let me know if there are any other hacker-worthy films, new or old, which I haven't yet reviewed.  Now, then, let's start with something painful...



JOHNNY MNEMONIC
This movie had a fairly straightforward plot.  In a cyberpunky future, Johnny, played by Keanu "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" Reeves, is a data smuggler for a living.  By plugging computers into his brain, he can use his brain as a massive hard drive with which to do his job, undetectably and stylishly. However, he didn't count on someone stuffing far more data into his head than he can handle, and leaving him to figure things out for himself before the compressed data kills his head...

I remember eagerly anticipating this one.  Keanu "Theodore" Reeves was fresh off his new action turn in "Speed," and was all set to star as a stylish protagonist in an FX-heavy film adaptation of one of the neatest stories by the God of all that is Cyberpunk fiction Himself, William Gibson.  They've got a hot young action star.  They've got this newish thing called CGI everyone's excited about.  They've got the cyberpunk smoke-and-chrome thing down pat by now.  They've got William fscking Gibson.  And they've even got the super-cool Ice-T in a supporting role.  How could they possibly screw this up?

Leave it to Hollywood.  They can always find a way.

Gibson must have badly needed a new pair of shoes or something, because there is no other reason I can think of that he'd approve of the filmmakers' decimating of his short story.  It's an okay movie in itself, but fans of Gibson's work will be sorely disappointed.  There were some cool effects for its time, though.  The Virtual Reality stuff is cheese food product now, but back then it was what everyone was always talking about.  And, the movie's production design is oddly impressive in that "Blade-Runner" way, where you'll sometimes find yourself watching the neat stuff going on in the background more than you'll be paying attention to the foreground.

I remember a silly gimmick they used when this first came out on video.  The box art was a picture of Keanu in the title role, with his forehead cut out so you could see the window on the cassette, along with the reel of tape.  I don't think they sell them like that anymore, though.

But in the name of all that is holy, steer WAY clear of the "cinematic PC game" that followed this movie's release.  That piece of crap is so bad that if you try to run it, your CPU is trained to electrocute you through your mouse button in order to save you from the pain.  Picture C-list actors doing bad impressions of the film's cast, with an interface that was horrible even then for a full-motion video game.  The one name actor was - get this - a pre-South Park Isaac Hayes in the Ice-T role.

FUN FACT: An amusement center in which I worked a few years ago had a pinball machine based on this movie.  Clueless customers saw the techie stuff, Keanu in a suit, and assumed it was based on "The Matrix."  Arcade customers can't read.  The machine was pretty cool, though, involving bit VR gloves you could pick the ball up off the field with.

Two out of five CDs for the movie.  None for the damn PC game.




CHANGING LANES
In this movie, Ben "Voyage of the Mimi" Affleck and Samuel "L." Jackson play two regular guys.  Ben's an up-and-coming lawyer, and Sam's an average recovering alcoholic working hard to earn the respect of his wife and kid. One fateful day, Ben and Sam have an accident whilst performing the titular changing of lanes while they are both on the way to two different, but frightfully important to the rest of their lives, appointments.  Ben, who is rushing to a court hearing involving a shady deal in which his law firm is involved, decides it'd be a good idea to just leave the scene of the accident and rush to work, despite Sam's pleas that he "do things the right way."  Sam's stranded, he misses his terribly important mortgage appointment, and his life descends into exponential levels of crap as a result.  Ben, meanwhile, doesn't realize that he left a vital folder of documents at the scene of the accident, the lack of which screws up HIS life, and which Sam retrieves...

That's just the beginning.  Most of the film revolves around Ben and Sam trying their damnedest to wreck each other's lives.  Ben is trying to force Sam to give back the folder, and Sam is just looking to take hideous amounts of revenge on Ben because his life is now total poop and he has nothing else to lose.  A main plot point revolves around Ben's rich lawyer character obtaining the services of a hacker to wreck Sam's life from the data side. The hacker, in typically Hollywood fashion, is able to pull a Sandra Bullock on Sam, erasing his credit, his just-approved bank loan, and who knows what else with a single dramatic keystroke.

This is nothing if not an interesting film, but you won't be in a good mood after it.  Both of these guys are twisted bastards, and the supporting cast is a crowd of equally nasty boogers.  You won't find yourself actually liking or rooting for any of these schmucks, but chances are you'll be fascinated enough by the concept to watch it through and see how it all turns out, and hope that both of these festering piles of dog snot get what's coming to them.

Normally, my sidekick Grey Frequency and I are generally easy-going people who can laugh at lots of stuff.  After seeing this movie in the theater, we had to strongly will ourselves not to automatically run everyone over on the ride home, so powerful was the film's "people suck canal water" message. Sort of cathartic, in an angry way, like Henry Rollins in a 'roid rage.  The film's hacking aspects are not too overdone, and a bit funny in themselves. I'd call this one a renter, when it's released.

Three out of five.  Add a bonus disc if you enjoy being really freakin' pissed off at the world.




S1M0NE
(to the tune of "The Brady Bunch")

Here's the story,
Of a film director,
Who is played by Al Pacino with panache,
He makes artsy films,
But no one likes then,
And he's strapped for cash.

Here's the story,
Of a hot new actress,
That Al generates on his PC desktop,
He gets filthy rich,
Everyone loves her,
But will it ever stop?

Okay, enough singing.  I'm sure it didn't do much for anyone in the room with you.

That's the gist.  Boy makes girl, girl gets famous, boy loses all morals and inner self in order to perpetuate myth of girl, you know the deal.  It's a fun kick in the head to see Al "Scarface" Pacino portraying a struggling, nervous, tetchy director.  It's even sillier when he has to directly puppet the S1M0NE character live, as he says her lines, performs her movements, etc.

Computers feature prominently in this movie, as you might have guessed. It's not going for realism at all, though, technology is just a tool with which to tell the story, which is much more fairy-tale-ish than one might expect.  The director's teenage daughter is a stylized hacker, and she and her hacking feature closely in the unwinding plot.  Geeks will get a chuckle out of the drives in this flick.  Hard drives are dropped into a retractable cd-rom-type of tray in a drive bay, and a classic 5.25" floppy drive is used for a most improbable task.  And, the film is a lot of fun besides.  The ridiculously twisty ending is a hoot.

Plus, what other film uses 1 and 0 in a word?  After all these years, a title in 31337-speak!

Four CDs.




REAL GENIUS
A quirky classic among the slew of 1980s kids-are-cooler-than-adults movies, Real Genius features Val Kilmer as a goofoff genius who, along with his genius friends, is tricked into building a super weapon for the military to use against those darn Russians everyone was so worried about back then. Nowadays, two of my best friends and one of my cats are Russian.

I don't remember too much about this movie, other than some geeky cool science stuff, and a creepy old hippie who lives in the basement and spends all his time hacking sweepstakes contests.  Still, Kilmer's better here than he was as Batman.  There are also a series of fun techie pranks the geniuses pull on their geek adversary that are worth a couple of chuckles.  Also, William Atherton, the bad guy from "Ghostbusters," is the bad guy again here.

Three CDs.  Add one if it's the mid-eighties and you're a teenager.




OPERATION TAKEDOWN
Okay, this is gonna hurt.  I'll just do my objective summary thing first, and then we'll get to the film criticism...

"Operation Takedown," based on the book "Takedown" by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura, professes to be based on actual events.  It tries to chronicle the shady dealings, shenanigans, and goings-on between super-hacker Kevin Mitnick and innocent victim Tsutomu Shimomura.

Crap crap crap crap.  Crappitty crap crap.  If you take a big pile of crap, boil it down in a crap vat until it's concentrated distilled crap, let that crap dry, and scrape all but the bottom layer of mega-dense supercrap away, what's left there will not even approach the crappiness of this crappy film.

First of all, this film has almost nothing to do with the real-life exploits of Mitnick and Shimumora.  Mitnick, a peaceful, maybe even timid, guy in real life, is shown as a racist, violent sociopath who will stop at nothing to get some cheezy hackerish revenge on the good, angelic, nice to his girlfriend Tsutomu.

All that aside (and it is indeed difficult to put aside,) this is still a crappy movie.  If they had given their characters fictional names, disconnected it entirely from the actual events surrounding Mitnick and Shimomura, and released it as just some crime fiction film, it would still be total unrealistic crap.  Flat-panel desktop monitors in 1994?  A super-duper computer virus that could bring down the entire Internet and shut down cities with a few keystrokes?  Typing the words "SEND VIRUS" into an email body in order to virus someone?  A suspect escaping pursuing FBI agents by leaping over one extra fence, and casually flipping the bird at the agents as he wrangles away?  Puh-lease.

I take pride in the fact that the actions of thousands of people all over the world kept this movie from being released in this country.  It was able to be released directly to video in Europe, and has spread via bootlegging to this side of the pond, but even free is too high a price to pay for this flick.  That said, thanks

For some reason, on the bootleg circuit and the filesharing networks, this film commonly has the additional title of "Hackers 2."  Who's damn stupid idea was this?  Not even the studio could have come up with a dumber idea. "Hackers," for all its inaccuracies, was still a fun movie with redeeming qualities.  "Operation Takedown" is not worthy to scrub the canola sludge off the theater floor with after a showing of "Hackers."  This was probably started by the same dope who feels the need to attribute every song parody mp3 to Weird Al, no matter how much it obviously isn't him.

No damn CDs for this crapstravaganza.



NEW YORK CITY HACKERS
This is a short documentary, only half an hour in length.  Made by some visual anthropology students from the University of Tromsø in Norway, it is a featurette on some issues involving hackers in the New York City area. Most of it seems to have been filmed around the Summer of 2000.  Highlights include some footage of Emmanuel Goldstein doing his radio show, "Off the Hook," lots of footage taken at a New York City 2600 meeting and the H2K conference, and interviews with some experts and some regular folks.  The case of 2600 vs. the MPAA is touched upon, and some old-time techies discuss the early days of hacking when they were first acquiring computers decades ago.

The University has been nice enough to put the entire movie up for download. It's a 217 meg DivX-encoded AVI file, up for grabs at http://www.atomsmurf.pasta.cs.uit.no.

It's not the best documentary on hacking, and it is a bit slow moving at times, but it's not bad at all.  For only a half-hour piece, they do manage to cover quite a few different subjects and present a rounded picture of things.  It's definitely worth a view if you have the bandwidth to download it in less than a day.

FUN FACT:  At around 16:11 in the file, during footage taken at a New York City 2600 meeting, the camera pans right by me.  Ironically, it's just as someone called Mike Hudack is talking about how he thinks most of the people who attend 2600 meetings aren't skilled enough to call themselves hackers. I'm the hacker in the red vest and wallet chain who obviously doesn't know he's on camera.

I always knew my international film debut would be a clueless-looking butt shot.

Three CDs.  Add a bonus one if, like me, you're a big fan of films with my butt in them.



And that's all of them for now.  Agree?  Disagree?  Have another hacker-related film to suggest?  Email me or post on our message board and let me know about it!

Wireless Beige Box Written by Captain B

One thing I've come to realize is that many things in electronics use fairly low voltage on average, and tend to run on DC (Direct Current) power. Cordless phones are no exception. In case you didn't already know, batteries also run on DC. Can you tell where I'm going with this yet?

Most cordless phones I've seen thus far use 9 volts to power the base. (You know, the unit you put your cordless phone on to charge it). So far, I seen one that used 12 volts to power it. But, I think those that use more than 9 volts to power the base mainly tend to have built in answering machines, speakerphones, or other extras you wouldn't need during wireless beige boxing, anyway. To be sure a given cordless phone's base uses 9VDC (9 volts DC) to power it, look either on the AC adapter plug for what It's voltage "rating" is (Displayed as 9VDC or whatever next to "output"). Disregard the input stats. That's the voltage/current coming into the AC adapter from the electrical outlet before the adapter lowers the voltage and current and converts it to DC. Or, you can also check on the back of cordless phone's base where the power cord connects to the back. Usually, you'll see something like "9V in", or simply "9V". Just as long as the phone's base uses 9 volts to power it, you can power it with a 9v battery. There's more than one way to go about this.

With the 1st method, you'll sacrifice your AC adapter, since it involves modifying it for the purpose. So, you you may want to think twice, With the 2nd method, you can buy a rechargeable battery charger called Power Bank from Radio Shack that doubles as a DC power source to power electronics. The 3rd method, which is probably the most complex of the three involves an adaptaplug, an adaptacord attached to it leading to a 9v battery clip soldered on at the end where the AC adapter would be. (Which, is basically the same as the 1st method described, except you won't have to ruin the AC adapter that came with the cordless).

Anyway, I'll describe only the 1st method here. But, you can always do it another way, too. By the way, you're going to need a wire cutter, wire stripper, 9v battery clip (Sold in packs of 5 at Radio Shack), standard 60/40 solder, and a soldering iron (30 watts should be fine for the job), and possibly electrical tape.

First, get AC adapter and cord for the cordless phone. (Remove it from the back of the cordless phone). What you'll need to do first is cut the AC adapter off of the power cord. Now, I've come to know more recently that sometimes AC adapters sometimes retain some electric current even after being unplugged for a bit. With 9v of power, I doubt It'd be a bad shock if there's leftover current. But, there's a way to remove leftover current if you happen to have an insulated alligator clips jumper cable (Also sold at Radio Shack). Just connect one of the alligator clips to one of the 2 prongs on the AC adapter, and touch the metal part of the other alligator clip on the other end of the jumper cable to the other prong on the AC adapter, thereby shorting it. If there was leftover current, there will be a little bit of a spark.

Okay, with that said, let's move on. As stated before, you'll have to cut the AC adapter off of the power cord. Then, cut a fairly small notch vertically downward on the power cord right between the 2 wires. Now, slowly and carefully, seperate the power cord by pulling the 2 wires apart from each other a bit. Then, carefully strip about an half and inch of insulation off each of the wires. Now, you can attach it to the 9v battery clip to the bare wire leads of the power cord.

There's 2 ways this can be done: With the 1st method, you can solder the bare wire leads from the power cord to bare wire leads from the 9v battery clips. In which case, you'll want to wrap the exposed section of soldered wire with electrical tape afterward. Or, you can use the 2nd method and solder the wire leads from the power cord directly to the 9v battery connector clip. If you go with that way, It may be better not to buy the heavy duty 9v battery clips as I think they can be a bit harder to solder the wire leads to. At any rate, once you have the 9v battery connector soldered up to the power cord, It's just a matter of connecting a 9v battery to the 9v battery connector to power the cordless phone's base.

Optionally, you could also remove the circuit board from inside the casing of cordless phone's base. Afterall, you don't need the interior components and not the chasis casing to operate the cordless phone's base. If you've bought a cordless phone that has a particularly small base, it may even be the case that you could fit it all inside something. Like say inside a TNI, or inside the bottom base part of a fortress payphone. Use your imagination, have phun, and as always, be careful with everything phreaking related that you do.

Letters to UPL Written by viewers like YOU!

     [Woo-hoo, I get to answer the mail!  Just call me "Occupant!" - RTF]


From: HAZMAT (HAZMAT@webskulker.com)
Subject: "Easy way around content filter"

Hi, I'm writing to tell that your easy way around content filter software doesn't neccessarily work. At my crappy school they have a content filter thing, and it filters anonymizer.com and all the dialectizer sites! AAARRRGGGHHH!! Do you know any other ways aroud this crap besides deleting the file (hmmm...good idea....). Me and my friend are huge fans of PLA and UPL, we CAN get to UPL but we also want to get to PLA, which is...blocked. well great site and i have a theory concerning a red box and free money....anyways, great site and ezine, keep them pumpng and hopefully i'll be able to contribute a few articles... latre (no i'm not canadian)

     [Do they also filter Babelfish?  That would be dumb, since it's really amazingly legitimately useful.  If you're like me, and I know I am, you'll want to pester your admin about that one until he/she/it cries and relents. Also, it seems that new translating sites are beginning to pop up here and there to compete with Babelfish.  Either way, just put the URL for PLA or whatever in the translator, and select "Translate French to English." You'll get a mostly unchanged look at PLA, only any French words RBCP used will be translated.  This is useful, since he has been known to sneak in French when we aren't looking.  He's weird like that.]

     [Another way around is to visit http://web.archive.org and look at the most recent copy of PLA (or whatever other banned site you want) they've archived.  It may not be the latest version, but it usually gets the job done.  Or, you could search for it on http://google.com, and view their cached version.]

---

From: Zerocoolx7@aol.com
Subject: Phreaker

Hello, im jus startin out as a phreaker with a m8 and was wondering if i cud
use a modem lead for the phone lead?

     [You're starting as a phreaker with a "mate?"  Real phreakers don't have mates.  They spend their time alone and unloved.  Unless, of course, your mate can drive you to a dumpster and be your lookout and let you drag bags of smelly trash into his/her car.  That's when you know it's true love, the kind they sing songs about.]

---

From: handsome gargantuan
Subject: Anyway to hack past the voip $/per minute gatekeepers?

I'm trying to find software that would let me bypass those ITSP toll-gates, make free pc-to-phone calls to anywhere. Is this simply not possible?...cause no one seems to talk about it.

     [Everyone knows, to get past a Gatekeeper, you need to be the Keymaster.]

---

Frome: mfbbs (mfbbs2946@excite.com)
Subject: Quick And Easy Way To Pose As A Celebrity

Very, very simple to pose as a celebrity and to make about 50 people start to hate them. First off, go to mtv.com and click on chat under the community drop-down menu. Unless you already have one make a fake name to login under. The go to the navigation bar anf find the one that shows the fake name you came up with at the end of the address. Just edit the name into the one of any celebrity you want to ridicule, and you can login to more than one chat at a time under different names. So you can be Fred Durst, Tara Reid, and Brad Pitt all at once!

     [What scares me is that you spend enough time on mtv.com to do all this.]

---

From: Evildead79@aol.com
Subject: (no subject)

Hi, Linear, jesus loves you.

     [It's nice that you want to tell linear this, but I believe the Buddha would prefer linear to discover it for himself.  At least that's what the Lord and Lady told me.]

---

From: Dr.Destryer (Thecatoncrack@hotmail.com)
Subject: BYPASSING YOUR SCHOOL'S NETWORK SECURITY

Frist go to fictional.net and download the fictional daemon wcich is a ftp/telnet server and insall it.  Set it up so that the network drive that has the classes folders on it is on your FTP acess privlages list.  Then set it up to startup hidden and not display the icon in the tray then do a search on the C dirve for WINIPCFG and run it find the computers ip adress (somthing like 10.10.10.???) and then ftp to the ip number and when someone logs onto the computer with the sever you can ftp into there folder.

This server also has a beasty chatroom with a max of 10 users telnet in and type the command chatmode.

     [Thanks!  It's always nice to receive handy tips and solid info from our intelligent readers!]

---

From: Luke020888@aol.com
Subject: lol

oh my god you people seem like such losers! why the hell dont you sad acts get a life! all of us normal people laugh at you and you no it and you just wont admit it! and shall i tell you why? because your are sad act motherfuckers who lick camels arses whilst bumming an aardvark! plese reply to this e-mail asap! have a nice day all our love the europeans!

     [Thanks!  It's always nice to receive handy tips and solid info from our intelligent readers!]

---

From: HAZMAT (HAZMAT@webskulker.com)
Subject:  How to make little messages on your IE screen

Okay, this is retarded, but quite entertaining if you have no life, like me, okay so in the address bar type "about: Hello, world!" with out the quotes. The web page display shows a white background with Hello, world! printed on the upper left-hand corner, right? Good, try it with other messages. Or get the password (thats from another issue of UPL...) of a computer from a Wal*Mart or something and do it, again with an anti-retail store message, since they're evil. I'm sure you can find some other fun uses with this little idea...heheheh.

     [Neat!  For some extra pizzazz in store kiosks, you could throw in some HTML.  An <H1> or a few <BIG> tags before your message can make your letters grow, just like that evil queen lady from the original Power Rangers always did with her magic staff thing.  Or, you could just waste everyone's time by inserting a <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0"> tag after your about: and sending the browser into an endless refreshing loop.]

---

From: "BlackForestCobra" <blackforestcobra@aol.com>
Subject: More international 800#'s

New Zealand (1-800-248-0064)
Portugal (822-2667)
Panama (872-6160)
Phillipines (336-7445)
Spain (247-7246)
Taiwan (626-0979)
Thailand (342-0066)
Turkey (828-2646)
Uruguay (245-8411)
Yugoslavia (whatever that is called now) (367-9841)

That is all the international direct numbers I have, if anyone has the one for the UK I would really appreciate it, also if anyone has the direct numbers to small, remote asain coutries or any at all please email me. Thanks! have Phun

Naja

     [Super-cool!  Thanks a bunch!]



That's about it for this guerilla issue.  Check out Toneage!

DISCLAIMER

THE UPL ARISTOCRACY (ph33r!)