Displaying items by tag: War Dialing

DEF CON 22, Las Vegas, NV 2014 – On the last day of DEF CON 22, in oddly empty halls and with very subdued (hung over) conversations going on, I walked into what was probably the most entertaining security talks I have ever seen. To start with the premise of the talk was absurdly enticing. How and, of course, why would anyone want to put a sniffer on a cat or turn a dog into a denial of service station? Even though I had briefly covered the concept I still needed to hear how it all happened and then the real why behind it.

Data security (and privacy) has been in the news a lot lately as if it is a new and troubling issue. In fact this has been a major topic of discussion going back to the mid-1980s when the first consumer available modems hit the market. This started the practice of war dialing where phone phreaks would dial random numbers to see if any would answer to their computers. One of the more famous phone phreaks is none other than Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple Computers. These are the guys that pioneered the hacking scene (and in some cases the piracy scene as well). Back then security was primitive and usually consisted nothing more than a login and a password. Fast forward more than 30 years and the security of some places is little better than what it was back in the war dialing days.