For many years, rich corporate mongers have invested in personal telemail
boxes for their employees. The generic term for this type of messaging system
is a "voice mailbox". It's nothing more than an answering machine with a few
extra frills. The good thing about voice mailbox hacking, is that there are
1-800 access numbers, which makes it easy for anyone who doesn't feel like
phreaking to your number, to leave you a message.
OPERATING GTE TELEMAIL
======================
To play with any voice mailbox, it is usually necessary to have a touch
tone fone. This incorporates the standard 0-9 digits and the two function keys.
The symbol that looks like a tic-tac-toe sign, "#", is called the pound key.
The other is an asterisk, and is called that, or the "star". You will need to
be farmiliar with those to use this system.
GTE Telemail, as like other voice mailoxes are VOICE. IE: You don't use
your modem for hacking this, it's all manual (pain in the butt, yes, I know).
If you like, you can try all this out while you are reading the file, just so
that you get used to the service.
The phone number for this service is: 1-800-348-6551. When you first dial
the number, and it answers, you'll hear this: "<Beep><Beep><Beep><Booo> Hello.
You've reached the telemessages service. The person you are calling is
presently unavailable. To leave a message, enter the address of the person you
are calling; or to access your regular message box, enter the pound sign".
Most of the hacking that you are going to be doing is on the "regular
message box". This is where the people get the messages that people have sent
to them. You would dial the pound key after that announcement. To make your
life easier, you never have to wait for those recordings to finish. You can
interrupt the lady only after she has begun speaking, but you can dial the
pound key right after the beeps. After pressing the pound key, you will hear
another recording: "Please enter your id number". It is here that you would
enter someone's id number. You will then hear a short "beep". Another recording
will come on if it is a valid number: "You have XX new messages, and XX saved
messages". New messages are ones that you haven't heard yet, saved messages are
the ones that you wanted to keep for later reading, or rereading.
There are different types of boxes on this service. Some have "Greeting
Messages" and "Bulletins", some have a strange method of picking up messages. I
will go over those now:
If you have messages waiting, you can receive them by dialing "2".
Sometimes, it won't give you that option, so you will have to dial "011" for
your new messages, or "012" for your saved messages. When you are listening to
your messages, you may dial a "2" to pause, and another "2" to continue. A "3"
will rewind the messages a couple of seconds back, and a "4" will fast forward
the message. Usually, if you hit the "4" key twice in a row quickly, it will
jump to the end of the message and beep, giving you a second menu.
After you have heard the message, you are given these options:
022: Reply back to the person
021: Redirect the message
7: Save the message
5: Delete the message
Dialing the asterisk at any point is like an abort command. It usually will
stop what you are doing and go to the last menu before what you are currently
doing. If you dial the asterisk at the top menu, "To get your new messages,
dial 011...etc", you will get a recording that says, "GoodBye", and then be
hung up.
HACKING GTE TELEMAIL
====================
....is a pain, but it works.
The object when hacking these things is find out as many 6 digit personal
id codes as possible. You see, to send someone a message, that involves a 7
digit code. Since the 6 digit code is easier to get, and gives you more
information, you have to scan through an entire prefix of numbers to get as
many id codes as possible.
All you really need is a touch tone fone, and a notebook. It's handy if
your fone has some kind of memory, and you can recall any number at a single
touch. Like my fone here, there are 12 extra buttons that you can program
numbers into.
First, you have find out a prefix for Texas. You know, a prefix, the first
three numbers in a seven digit fone number, not counting the area code. There's
lots of ways to do this. You can either whip out your fone book, or dial
"1-214-555-1212" or "1-817-555-1212". Most of the time, you can phreak to those
two numbers from any service. I know that Sprint lets you.
Tear out a separate piece of paper from the notebook, and draw up a chart
that looks similar to this:
0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
4 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
The chart stands for numbers from 00-99. The first row, represents "00-09",
the second row would be "10-19" (understand?). To read it, the number on the
farthest left is the first digit in the number, then you just go from "0-9" on
the rest of the row for the second digit. It's easier than writing out "00-99"
in order.
Now, take the 3 digit prefix in Texas, and add a "0" after it. In other
words, if the prefix you picked was "123" (No, that's not a real working
prefix), then you'd have "1230". If you are using the programmable fone that I
mentioned before, put this four digit number into a key, or somewhere on the
fone that you can retrieve it easily.
Dial up the number (1-800-348-6551), and wait for the
"<beep><beep><beep><boo>", as soon as you hear the last <Boo> sound, hit the
pound key. As soon as the lady begins to speak, hit the key that has those four
numbers programmed into it, or manually dial those four numbers. After that,
dial the two digit number that you get from the chart. This should make 6
digits in all. If it's an invalid code, you will get this recording: "We're
sorry, we are unable to process the id you entered, please try again." As soon
as you hear the lady start to say "We're sorry", hit the asterisk button.
You'll hear two quick beeps. Cross out the number on the chart that didn't
work. For example: You just began the dialing, you picked "123" for a prefix,
and added the "0" on to get "1230". You were starting from the first line of
your chart, which looks like this:
0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
You would dial the number and everything, press the pound sign, and hit the key
that had the "1230" on it, or if you didn't have that kind of fone, you would
dial the "1230" manually. You would then dial a "00". If that was invalid, and
the recording began saying "We're sorry....", you hit the asterisk, and then
cross out the zero (not the farthest one on the left).
If the code didn't work, you would go on to the next number. In the
example, you would be dialing "01". If the "123001" didn't work, you'd cross
out the "1" and go onto "02".
GTE Telemail only gives you three tries at getting an id code. On the third
try, you will get this kind of recording (which, by the way, you can abort, and
hit "*" where it will just hang up on you): "We are still unable to process
your id. For assistance, please call 800-527-1149. Thank You" <click>.
Now, let's say that you didn't get one of these recordings, but you heard a
short beep after you entered in the whole id. That means you got a working id
code! On your chart, don't cross out the number, but circle it. In the
notebook, write out the entire 6 digit id code.
If there are no messages on the box, just hit the asterisk until you hear
"good-bye", and go onto the next number on your chart. If there ARE messages,
you want to read them without the owner knowing. In some situations, that's
impossible, but just don't kill anybody's messages.
You want to try to keep all NEW messages NEW, so that if the original owner
of the box calls up, he will still have the same messeage. GTE operators throw
a pissy fit if the messages aren't going through, and they order all of these
conferences with their customers. Anyhow, if there is only 1 new message, after
you've listened to it, press the "*" button, and that will keep the message
new. If there are more than one, press "7" to put the message into the "saved
messages bank" after you have listened to them, except for the last message,
which you can still keep as new by hitting the asterisk.
Reading saved messages is easier because nobody has to know that you did
it. Usually after reading your new messages, the system will say, "beginning
saved messages" if there are any. Otherwise, just dial "012" from the main menu
for the saved messages. Remember to save all of these messages with the "7"
button.
Now, the object here, when listening to all of these messages is to find
out as much information as possible about the owner of that id code, and the
people that are sending the message to that box. Let's say you are listening to
a message, and you hear this: "John, this is Michael". That's great, you would
scratch down "John - Michael" in your notebook right after where you wrote down
that box's id number. This will remind you that John owns that box, and Michael
sent the message to him.
If you EVER hear them giving out the 7 digit address codes over a
telemessagenger, be sure to write that down too. Any other information is
handy, too.
Now, what on earth are you going to do with all of this information? You're
going to set up your own boxes! Or at least take over other people's boxes. The
first method is called "Read and Reply". Let's say, for example, you had one
box, and a message was sent that said, "Hello John, this is Michael.", and on
another box, you heard a message that said, "Hello Michael, this is Judy", you
might have a match. You see, since you now know Michael's box number, and
Michael sent a message to this John dude, all you have to do is go to the first
box and reply to the message that Michael sent, and it will be sent back to
Michael's box.
So, this is exactly what you must do if you think you have a match (I will
use the example above for references to make this easier):
Ex.:
Id Code: 123000 had a message to John, from Michael
Id Code: 123050 had a message to Micahael, from Bubba.
Ok, so you think that you have a match. You would go to the box that had the
message >FROM< the guy who's box you know. In other words, you would dial
"12300", and listen to the John/Michael message again. Press the "4" button to
fast forward through the message, until you hear the beep. Dial a "022" to
reply to the message. You would then dial a "1" to begin your message
recording, where you would say the last 3 digits into the phone (in this case,
you would say "000"), and press "5" to end the recording. It will then say "You
reply has been sent. You may now dial 022 to reply...etc". Just press the
asterisk until it says "good-bye", and call back. When you get on, get onto
the id number 123050, because that's the id that you think is the same that
sent that John dude a message. If there is a new message, with your voice
saying "000" into it, you got it! More on this in a second.
Don't cry if the boxes don't match up and the message doesn't go through.
There is still a chance that there are other people with the same name. Just
set them up the same way. Now, if, when you first listened to the messages on a
box, heard your voice saying three digits, but you never tried matching them up, then you just got a box! Write down the two numbers together somewhere.
If you have two matches, this is what you do... I am going to use the
examples above with the 123000 and 123050 boxes. Ok, now you have two boxes
that are "linked" through messages. Your next mission is to get both boxes to
have messages from one another that have YOUR voice on it, and to kill all
other messages. In this example, this is what you would do: Get onto the 123000
box and reply to the "from michael" message. For your message, don't say
anything, just have about 7 seconds of silence, and then finally hit "5" to
finish the message. Next, you would go to the 123050 box, and would listen to
the 7 seconds of silence message that you just sent. Reply back to this, and do
the same thing. So now, both boxes have these "7 seconds of silence" or "blank"
messages in their boxes. N GTE Telemail, as like boxes and kill all of the
other messages in the box. Everything, even the "michael" message goes.
You have now siezed the box, and it is at your will. You must pick one box
to be your "update" box, and the other to be your "pickup" box. The "Update"
box is the one that will have your greeting message on it, like "You've dialed
Master Micro's box, to send him a message, dial 022 after the tone." The
"Pickup" line is the box that will be used for only YOU, where you read
messages that other phreaks have left you. To set these up, do the following:
Go to the box you picked as your "pickup" line. Read the blank message and reply to it. For the message, say whatever, like "This is so-and-so's box, dial
022 after the beep to reply". You then dial up the update line, read the
welcome message that you just sent, and hit "7" after listening to it to save
it. You'll hear the blank message somewhere, either as your new or your saved
message. Kill the blank message on the update line. Now, if you ever wanted to
change your greeting message, go to the pickup line, record a new message by
replying to the blank one; go to the update line, and kill the old greeting
that you don't want, and save the new one.
Once you have your box set up, all you have to do is give all your phreak
phriends the address and instructions to the update line. Tell them to save the
messages when they read it, and to reply to it using 022 if they want to send
you a message. Occassionally, check your pickup line for new messages, and kill
them after you have read them just in case the owner of the box catches on and
changes his id code.
The other method to set up boxes is used mainly for setting up codelines, or
other kinds of boxes where you don't want replies, or it is not totally
necessary to have replies. A codeline is a voice box that you have devoted to
telling your phriends new codes, and any other new info. Setting these up are
easy as hell, and you can make as many as you want, but there is a catch. You
must have figured out both the 7 digit address code, and the 6 digit id code
for the same box. Let's say there was a dude named Frank, and his address code
(the number you dial as soon as you get on, instead of dialing the pound key
and id number, to send the guy a message) was "1234567", and his id code was
"098765". First, to find out if the address and the id code are the same, you
do the same method of matching up first names. Call up the telemail service,
and instead of dialing the pound key and everything, dial the 7 digit address
