Page 871 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

box technologies have been developed and widely used by phreakers,

but only a few of them work against today’s telephone systems based
on packet switching. Here are a few of the phreaker tools often used to
attack telephone services:

Black boxes are used to manipulate line voltages to steal long-
distance services. They are often just custom-built circuit boards
with a battery and wire clips.

Red boxes are used to simulate tones of coins being deposited into
a pay phone. They are usually just small tape recorders.

Blue boxes are used to simulate 2600 Hz tones to interact directly
with telephone network trunk systems (that is, backbones). This
could be a whistle, a tape recorder, or a digital tone generator.

White boxes are used to control the phone system. A white box is a
dual-tone multifrequency (DTMF) generator (that is, a keypad). It
can be a custom-built device or one of the pieces of equipment that
most telephone repair personnel use.

As you probably know, cell phone security is a growing

concern. Captured electronic serial numbers (ESNs) and mobile
identification numbers (MINs) can be burned into blank phones to
create clones (even subscriber identity modules—SIMs—can be
duplicated). When a clone is used, the charges are billed to the
original owner’s cell phone account. Furthermore, conversations

and data transmission can be intercepted using radio frequency
scanners. Also, anyone in the immediate vicinity can overhear at
least one side of the conversation. So don’t talk about confidential,
private, or sensitive topics in public places.