phreaking

   [from `phone phreak']

   1.  The  art  and science of {cracking} the phone network (so as, for
   example, to make free long-distance calls).

   2.  By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially,
   but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see {cracking}).

   At  one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers;
   there  was  a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual
   game  and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services
   was  taboo.  There  was  significant  crossover  between  the  hacker
   community  and  the  hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground
   networks  of  their  own  through  such  media  as  the legendary TAP
   Newsletter.  This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider
   dissemination  of  the  techniques  put  them  in  the  hands of less
   responsible  phreaks.  Around  the  same  time,  changes in the phone
   network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of
   hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts
   such  as  stealing  phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of
   gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time
   hackers  still  phreak  casually just to keep their hand in, but most
   these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other
   paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {cracker}{dumpster diving}{phreaker}{vadding}]