Ghost in the Wires_ My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker - Kevin Mitnick [71]
Ms. Creeks, sitting at her desk, would be able to tell when each connection was dropped.
While waiting for the frame tech to come back on the line and confirm that the jumpers had been pulled, I went to my fridge and got a Snapple to enjoy while picturing Lilly anxiously sitting in her office with her telephone to her ear.
Then came the part that the whole operation up to now had been just a lead-in for. Back on the line with Lilly, I said, “I’m done here. Do you want your boxes reconnected?”
She sounded annoyed. “Of course.”
“I’ll need the connection information for each line going into the three boxes.” She probably thought I must be a little slow-witted if I didn’t even know where the jumpers belonged that I had pulled just a few minutes earlier, but the request seemed credible because she had seen the connections drop: clearly she really was talking to the frame tech at the CO.
She gave me the information. I said, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
I put the phone on mute again, then called back the tech in the Calabasas CO and asked him to reconnect the cables to “our security boxes.”
When he was finished, I thanked him and got back on the other phone. “Hey, Lilly,” I said, “I’ve hooked everything back up. Are they all three working?”
She sounded relieved. “Everything is coming back up now. It all seems to be working.”
“Fine. Just to double-check, what phone numbers should be connected to these boxes? I’ll do a line verification to make sure everything is connected properly.”
She gave me the numbers.
Shit! They weren’t wiretapping just one of my dad’s lines, they were wiretapping all three! I wouldn’t be having any more conversations over my dad’s phones, that was for sure.
I still needed to know when the taps had been installed, so I could gauge which of my conversations had been intercepted.
Later, Lewis and I, for kicks, wanted to listen in on some of the other phones that Pacific Bell was tapping.
There was a hitch: for added security, the boxes wouldn’t start monitoring a line until a valid PIN, or “personal identification number,” was entered. I had an idea: it was a long shot, with almost no chance of working, but I tried it anyway.
First I had to be able to call in to the monitor box at the CO. So I’d call the CO and tell the frame tech who answered the phone, “I need you to drop that line because we’re testing.” He’d do it, and Pacific Bell Security’s connection would then be dropped from the intercept.
I dialed in to the box and began guessing the passwords that might have been set up by the manufacturer: “1 2 3 4”… nothing. “1 2 3 4 5”… nothing. All the way up to the last one I figured was worth trying: “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.”
Bingo! Incredibly, the people at Pacific Bell Security had never changed the manufacturer’s default PIN on these boxes.
With that password, I now had a complete technique that would let me listen in on any of Pacific Bell’s intercepts anywhere in California. If I found out the Security Department had one of its boxes at the Kester CO, say, or the Webster CO, I’d get a frame tech to drop the line Pacific Bell was using to call the monitor box, and then I’d call in to the box myself and enter the default PIN, which was the same on every box. Then Lewis and I would listen in and try to figure out who was being intercepted.
We’d do this just for fun, just because we could, sometimes twice or three times in a week. After we identified the target’s phone number, we’d call Pacific Bell’s Customer Name and Location (CNL) Bureau, give the phone number, and get the name of the person being monitored. Once we were told the phone was listed to the Honorable Somebody-or-Other. A little research