[118820] in Cypherpunks
Re: Unplugged! The biggest hack in history
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Hal Lockhart)
Fri Oct 8 17:32:42 1999
Message-ID: <9D8B3C643D2AD311BC8D00508B120BA40F5B9A@mahqexc01.storagenetworks.com>
From: Hal Lockhart <Hal.Lockhart@storagenetworks.com>
To: "'cypherpunks-unedited@toad.com'" <cypherpunks-unedited@toad.com>,
"'pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz'" <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 16:52:32 -0400
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Reply-To: Hal Lockhart <Hal.Lockhart@storagenetworks.com>
pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) writes:
>Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net> writes:
>>>>The Wall Street Journal reported:
>>>>In early December 1994, Morris's "analog data-intercept device" finally
>>>>arrived from the FBI's engineering department. It was a $70,000
>>>>prototype that Morris calls "the magic box."
>>Marcel Popescu wrote:
>>>Er... someone please explain me, I'm lost here - is this a $70,000
>>>MODEM?!?!?
>>I think this is one of those wonderful confusions that occur when someone
>>is trying to keep methods and technique secret.
>Blind demodulation is hardly a secret. Why spend $70K when you can buy
off-
>the-shelf hardware to do the same thing (for example
>http://www.appsig.com/prods/m1520.html with
>http://www.appsig.com/prods/data.html or
>http://www.appsig.com/prods/elvira.html).
>Peter.
I looked into this seriously last year and there is a much simpler (and
cheaper) way of doing this. Assuming access to the wire, you just bridge it
instead of tapping it.
All you need is a laptop with two modems in it and some hardware to bridge
the analog initial handshake (DTMF tones, carrier squeal, etc.). You just
play man in the middle and read the digital data stream directly. Estimated
price <$10K.
I can't claim credit for this idea, but I don't have ready access to my
archives to say who suggested the idea to me.
Hal
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