including the Disc Box variation

(Generates ACTS coin tones)


As much as the Blue Box was talked about in the 1970s and 1980s, the Red Box is the topic of discussion in the 1990s. The Red Box makes the same tones that ACTS payphones use to signal the phone company that coins have been deposited.


If you saw the movie Hackers you saw a crude approximation of how red box tones could once have been gathered straight from a payphone. This really doesn't work; you'll find the tones are muted if you try it. The best way is to make them yourself with one of zillions of computer box tone generator programs out there.


In order for red box tones to work, the payphone you are calling from has to be an ACTS payphone - it has to use Red Box tones itself. The audio quality of the tones has to be good, not because of any anti-fraud devices the telco has set up but simply because the coin tone detectors have a narrow tolerance to avoid false detection of speech and background noise as coin tones.


If an operator comes on and accuses you of boxing, it's because she was already listening. The phone mutes the mic while playing its red box tones, she knows this and knows that there shouldn't be any street noise, bumping of a tape recorder into the handset, breathing, and other sounds while the tones play. She also knows that the tones should be loud, clear and undistorted. The system doesn't make those judgments; a human does and she does so only when the boxer's other messing around with the phone has triggered an exception alarm. Or if you were calling long distance and your three minutes are up...


The red box does still work and is still widely used; those who say it doesn't either don't have access to ACTS phones or played really bad tones. It won't work at all on any phone where the party you're calling complains about really bad speech quality - those phones are likely to be marked "modified to prevent fraud" and the distortion from the mouthpiece is the means used to prevent red boxing on those phones.





There are many, many text files on red box tones; the best method involves the use of a tape recorder and an acoustically-sealed (like an acoustic coupler modem) speaker for best sound quality and elimination of suspicious noise. The worst methods involve "ingenious" means - whistles, recordable hallmark cards, modified pocket dialers, yada yada. None of those things really work well and all involve the phreak spending extra money on junk, when the whole idea behind phreaking is to not spend money.


Most of those who have written about the Red Box and different ways of generating the ACTS tones have stuck to the name "Red Box" faithfully, but the one exception that I have encountered is Napalmoliv's variation, called the Disc Box. The Disc Box is simply the tones of a Red Box recorded to a recordable audio CD and played back through a Discman CD player. As Napalmoliv claims, this will undoubtedly give the best quality red box tones possible as its output is high-fidelity digital audio, but once those tones leave the CD player and travel through the air and into the phone's mouthpiece, all the problems that complicate redboxing are still there. Background noise, suspicious operators, electronic countermeasures, physical bumps, and the like will still foil red boxers no matter how crystal clear the tone source is. But at least it does remove one bottleneck, where so many other pea-brained red box schemes add them.

Plausibility

100 percent fact, and well documented.

Obsolescence

Doesn't work everywhere, and rapidly decreasing in availability. Forget it on COCOTs, cardphones, Nortel Millennium Payphones and any payphone not using the ACTS system. In November, 2002, AT&T has discontinued coin-op long distance altogether!

Skill

Very little. It's almost as easy as Razor and Blade demonstrated in Hackers. That's probably why it gets so much discussion.

Risks

Few if you are careful. Don't mess with the phone and no operators will come on. Play good tones and it will work. And remember, any kind of payphone phreaking that involves gadgets looks suspicious, so there is always the risk that someone might see you and call the police.


Description from The Fixers Box Review @ ArtofHacking.com