js7a+@andrew.cmu.edu (James Price Salsman) (07/16/90)
Since many people in educational establishments read this sort of thing, I thought I'd relate a story from my freshman year here at Carnegie Tech, along with a warning that might help others prevent what happened to me. I enrolled late, and after freshman camp, my first exposure to dormitory life came as temporary housing in the lounge of Scobell Hall, a dorm dating back to the early 30's or so with plenty of interesting wiring history. I was not a typical freshman hacker type; even for Carnegie Tech, I had been a bit more acquainted with the telephone system than most of my peers ... OKAY, I admit it, I used to blue-box off a CAMA trunk in the 303 NPA and had been known to dial into the occasional Plovernet or similar "phracker" BBS, including a particularly interesting one known as "Farmers of Doom." F.O.D. was operated by someone by the name of Mark Tabas who said that he had re-wired a payphone into a defunct extension in his home, and conned the CO into adding another line to the pay phone. While I'm not sure if this was true, the F.O.D. extension number *was* similar to that of all the local payphones (NNX-99XX). Later, after F.O.D. had some sort of legal difficulties, -99XX was changed to -2600. Anyway, I had put all the hacking nonsense behind me when I enrolled in Carnegie Mellon: I was there to learn. But to my dismay I discovered that the "temporary" room in which I had been placed and which the housing service indicated would probably be my abode for the next four to eight weeks was missing a proper telephone connection. This was quite distressing, so I decided to investigate to see if anything could be done. It turned out that the temporary room had a wall socket, and an extension had been assigned to the room in the R.A.'s phone plan, so it seemed to just be a case of a wiring connection that needed help to be completed. I explained all this in extreme detail to the Dean of Housing, who seemed more impressed with my technical prowess than willing to act on the problem: he explained that many of the people in temporary rooms lacked telephone service, and the fact that my name was on the end of the list for permanent housing was simply an unfortunate feature of my college experience that I would benefit from having to live with. I didn't agree, and neither did my Resident Assistant. After securing his permission, and the permission of my neighbors so that I could bridge our lines if there was no active line ready to be connected to my room, I bid myK*$a"*E"[) Chem-E roommate goodbye and set off to correct the oversight of the workers who last hacked on Scobell Hall. The low-voltage wiring boxes were unlocked and clearly marked: I had no trouble locating my room's extension. I did have trouble, however, trying to understand the purpose of the adjacent wiring. After determining that the rooms assigned centrex extension was probably never turned on, I started to bridge by line into my neighbors. As soon as I had finished the nearly imperceptible job, a horde of fire engines pulled in to Margaret Morrison Street with sirens blaring and lights flashing. I was stunned. I knew where the fire circuits were, and had carefully avoided them except for a single high-resistance voltage meter check with. Certainly no audible alarms had gone off in the building, and the signal was such that even the firemen seemed clueless as to their precise destination. How I avoided panic, I don't know. I removed my encriminating bridge and returned to my room, relating to my R.A. that I, as the obvious culprit, would simply have to turn myself in. That opportunity presented its self shortly when the everhelpful CMU Campus Police arrived to investigate. Names were taken, stories were told and re-told. The next day I was placed on housing probation for a full semester: another infraction and I would have been evicted! The alarm had been declared an error in the City equipment by the Fire Department; if it hadn't I would have learned about the pleasures, nay, the relative paradise of off-campus housing much sooner. The day after that, my roommate and I were moved to a permanent dorm room. The next semester, I was arrested by the Secret Service, but that's another story for another time. MORAL: Campus Telecom Administrators Everywhere, I urge you: please make sure that all emergency wiring is clearly labeled as such, and that terminal boxes are padlocked ... hackers will be hackers, and it doesn't take a phone phreak from Carnegie Tech to cause far more problems than you would ever want, and remember: An Ounce of Prevention is worth a Gallon of Cure. :James Salsman ::Carnegie Mellon [Moderator's Note: I'll try to remember tomorrow to relate the story of how I spilled a soft drink on the switchboard at UC. I was very mortified by the experience, but the repairman who came out (it was a Sunday afternoon) didn't snitch on me to the phone room supervisor, so it went mostly undiscovered, although the regular operator who sat at that position complained the next day that something seemed wrong. PT]