frog, welcome to the forums! I'm very very glad to see someone asking a question like this.
Yes, the technology is a bit different. The phone system is fundamentally the same, but of course there are going to be different phone companies and different trunks, switches, telephone numbering plans, etc.
TNI. It stands for "telephone network interface". Think of an NIC, if you know what that is. The TNI is the box (usually outside of the house, if it's residential) that is the 'base' for the connection inside your home. It's basically where you wire your phones from through out the building. The other end connects to the nearby telephone lines, and thus gives you service.
TNI (credit to newtechnologyhome.com)
Telephone number. Not to repeat the obvious, but the format of a phone number here in the US is;
1+NPA+NXX+XXXX
I know you don't live in the US, but this is for other people who may. The NPA is the area code, the NXX is the exchange, and the XXXX is the last four digits of the NANP 7-digit local telephone number.
I know that it is different in Canada. See
this for more information of telephone numbering plans for different countries.
PSTN. The public switched telephone network. The public telephone system.
War dialing. This is always fun to do, and very interesting if you discover something cool. You simply scan a range of telephone numbers (usually automated, though you can definitely do it manually) and see what you can find. There are all sorts of telephone numbers out there that you probably aren't even aware of. Milliwatts, test numbers, "backdoors", dynamic messages (ie; "Today's test color is [color]. The time is [time]. Current status is [on/off]."), teleconference bridges, private telco numbers, and much more.
Beige boxing. It is still 100% possible. I've seen people say it isn't, which is incredibly ignorant. The reason? As you may be able to tell, the entire idea of beige boxing is exploiting not the telephone network, but the physical security of a business or residential home. No matter what the telephone companies do, beige boxing will always exist. The least they can do is encourage their customers to protect their TNI boxes. This can be done by keeping them inside or putting a lock on them to prevent unauthorized tampering.
Red boxing. This little box emmits tones that trick the operator into believing that you have deposited coins. I don't know too much about where and when this works these days, but I believe that with certain pay phones it still does work (perferably older pay phones). I know in the US is it sort of rare for red boxing to work, not too sure about other parts of the world though. You may be able to social engineer a dumb op when doing this, but it all depends.
Blue boxing. Ah, my favorite type of boxing! There are still many places in the world that are running older telephony equipment that doesn't utilize something called CCIS (out of band signaling), despite what you may hear. I can ramble on about this forever, I think it is insanely interesting. Older (analog) equipment doesn't make use of two channels (one to communicate with other equipment (private) and the other to listen for voice (puiblic)) like newer equipment does. So you can basically "talk" to the trunk and make it seem like you are an operator, since your voice travels on the same channel. You can MF the trunk, play certain pairs of sound frequencies, and you'll manually override control over it. You can then do basically anything an operator can do! The sounds of the old analog systems are amazing to hear. It's addictive.
Something I posted on another website's forums:
"I want to clear a few things up. Lately I've seen a lot of confusion about what is still possible with phone phreaking and what isn't. Also, I haven't been active here very much lately (yeah sad, I'm the admin too!). I've been busy. I can't say specifically with what, but I think you get the idea.
Phone phreaking is still very possible, despite what "they" tell you.
The supposed last trunk to utilize MF signaling here in the US was replaced on June 15th, 2006. It was a N2 carrier. The exchange was (218)-488, which is in Wawina. I wasn't able try it out my self, since by the time I became aware of it it was too late, but I hear the amount of MFing into that trunk that occurred got so heavy that it started causing problems for that exchange.
I can tell you from experience that there are still so many neat little "tricks" you can play with in our phone system here in the US. It isn't nearly as dead as most people claim it to be. As technology changes, so do exploits. As long as you respect them and don't abuse them to a point where the telephone companies are getting mad, I don't think they will fade away that fast.
It's quite an amazing thing, really. All the little clicks. All the sounds. The unknown sounds intrigue the hacker mind. Just something about those analog sounds...
As for the future? I'm thinking voIP will probably get really big. But so what? That will bring a whole new era of phone phreaking, just you wait. Those of you who haven't had the chance to blue box or try anything cool, don't be disappointed. There are still so many things to explore.
Learn how the phone system works. Question everything. Experiment. And keep learning."
Dial-in's. This is a more recent form of phone phreaking. Dial-in's are basically modems that are hooked up to a computer. You can dial in (hence, "dial-in's") to the system using your own modem. The security of the system all depends on the service running that is awaiting remote connections. Generally, you usually will need to login. You can discover these by war dialing a certain range.
I've only explained a few things to get you started. There are still so many tricks that you can play around with in our phone system. Many people claim that phone phreaking is dead, but I think that's ignorance. I live in the US and I am still able to do a lot of things many claim to be impossible or dead. I'm sick of hearing that it's impossible; it isn't.
I really hope this helps. If you have any more questions at all, feel free to leave a message on my VMB. The number is +12069848523.
Tutorial written by Devilz212.
(Revised)
