TELECOM Digest     Wed, 7 Feb 2007 14:30:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 39

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    How to Shut Down the Net (Ted Bridis, AP)
    Hacking Black Hat (Ira Winkler, Compunet)
    RSA: New Threats Make Traditional Antivirus Tools Ineffective (J. Vijayan)
    Use Skype WITHOUT Instaling Software? (me@privacy.net)
    CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update (communicationsdirect_daily)
    Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services? (T)
    Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services? (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com)

====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
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we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime.   Geoffrey Welsh

               ===========================

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:26:13 -0600
From: Ted Bridis, Associated Press <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: How to Shut Down the Net


Hackers attack key Net traffic computers

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that
help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most
significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted as long as 12 hours
but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to
the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists
worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened
to saturate some of the Internet's most vital pipelines.

The Homeland Security Department confirmed it was monitoring what it
called "anomalous" Internet traffic.

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to
the homeland or our computing systems at this time," the department
said in a statement.

The motive for the attacks was unclear, said Duane Wessels, a
researcher at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
at the San Diego Supercomputing Center. "Maybe to show off or just be
disruptive; it doesn't seem to be extortion or anything like that,"
Wessels said.

Other experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but
vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea.

The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the company that operates
servers managing traffic for Web sites ending in "org" and some other
suffixes, experts said. Officials with NeuStar Inc., which owns
UltraDNS, confirmed only that it had observed an unusual increase in
traffic.

Among the targeted "root" servers that manage global Internet traffic
were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet's
primary oversight body.

"There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night
hours here in California and into the morning," said John Crain, chief
technical officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers. He said the attack was continuing and so was the hunt for its
origin.

"I don't think anybody has the full picture," Crain said. "We're
looking at the data."

Crain said Tuesday's attack was less serious than attacks against the
same 13 "root" servers in October 2002 because technology innovations
in recent years have increasingly distributed their workloads to other
computers around the globe.

AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun contributed to this report from New York.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:30:11 -0600
From: Ira Winkler, Compunet <computnet@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Hacking Black Hat


Hacking Black Hat
Ira Winkler

I had some issues with a Computerworld.com column a couple months ago
 from Frank Hayes on "quack hackers" -- specifically, with his apparent
belief in hackers as some generally noble breed. I believe I first met
Hayes when he covered my presentation at the Black Hat conference back
in 1997 or so, where I'm sure he also gained exposure to some of the
less-than-honest "honest hackers." I also believe that he has enough
exposure to see through the stereotypes that are out there.

The hacker stereotype is that of a socially inept genius spending all
his free time in isolation in front of his computer -- driven by
never-ending curiosity, striving to understand the intricacies of
computer systems and breaking through social and technical barriers to
overcome adversity and make the only true advancements in computer
security. Again, that's the stereotype.

I have to admit that the socially inept aspect appears to be accurate
(see "So, what's wrong with being an introvert?"). The rest of it,
including the genius part, is more hype than fact. True, there are
some genuine geniuses in the so-called hacker community, but those
people are few and far between. Just as there are a few people who
scrawl graffiti who demonstrate true artistic talent, there are a few
hackers who demonstrate genuine technical ability. And just as a great
many graffiti vandals mistakenly claim to share the talent of those
rare artists, there are many, many people who meddle with computers
and like to think that describing themselves as hackers puts them in
the same category as the few brilliant hackers out there.

I'll grant that there may have been a justification of sorts for
hackers to infiltrate systems, once upon a time. The original hackers
may have had to intrude on computer systems because there were few
available, and information about how to work the computers was even
more sparse. They had to access the telecommunications networks to get
into computers so that they had any access to one. By the 1990s
though, computer intrusions were wholly unnecessary; computers were
and are readily available, as is reasonably thorough documentation.

As systems and documentation became more widely available, the
emphasis on actual technical prowess diminished, and we saw the rise
of hacking scripts. Those prewritten tools allowed any inept person to
take over a system that was ineptly protected -- hence the derisive
term "script kiddie" for a person who cares more about attacking a
system than learning about it.

The widespread hacks that we see these days -- the ones that can be
reliably traced -- are generally the result of someone wanting to be
considered "l33t" rather than a display of technical prowess.
Essentially, it's criminal activity that results from too much free
time, again not unlike graffiti. There are many highly technical
people out there who make tremendous discoveries and help improve
security products, but they aren't hackers in the current sense. They
do it for the challenge, not for social recognition.

Of course, havoc-wreaking crackers have been perpetrating hoaxes long
before Black Hat was around, creating rumors that have become myths.
Many self-anointed hackers discover and report vulnerabilities that
have been long since corrected. Then there was the hacker who garnered
a great deal of media attention by claiming to organize a vigilante
campaign against online child pornographers; that soon turned out to
be a hoax.

Then came the incident that should have permanently shut the door on
the "honest hacker" shtick: the 1999 uproar when Cult of the Dead Cow,
a particularly high-profile group of hackers, passed out CDs of the
newly released version of the Back Orifice hacking tool at
DefCon. Those CDs were "somehow" infected with the Chernobyl
virus. Cult of the Dead Cow spokespeople claimed it was an accident,
but do you really believe that some of the most security-savvy hackers
around happened to not notice an infection from such a widespread,
high-profile virus?

The Black Hat conferences were designed to be a professional-grade
DefCon event, one dedicated to security professionals even as the
original show continued its evolution into an event for the script
kiddies and professionals trying to fit into the hacker
community. Black Hat, with its premium entrance fee, was intended to
attract computer professionals who wanted in-depth technical knowledge
about trends and techniques. From a business perspective, it was a
brilliant expansion of the DefCon brand -- the very name, Black Hat,
was both selling point and stigma. (As a matter of fact, I had a
falling out with my employer at the time for being the first keynote
speaker at the event.)

The fee made the audience much more select, and while many of the
sessions were repeated at DefCon the following weekend, it seemed to
fill a void somewhere between the professional conferences that were
weak in technical depth, and the Usenix security conferences that
seemed to attract mainly academics and researchers.

Years later, much of the press that comes out of Black Hat is related
to the release of newly discovered vulnerabilities. Black Hat seems to
have some of the most stringent submission guidelines around -- after
all, it is prestigious to be a speaker at the event, and guidelines
work to weed out the speakers who would waste attendees' time. But
there is also a strong bias towards releasing new hacks -- so new that
would-be reviewers don't get the opportunity to verify researchers'
claims. It makes sense in some ways, but when it goes wrong ... well,
we just saw what happens when it goes wrong.

This past year's events were the direct result of Black Hat review
policies.  I know several people who are (or at least were) reviewers
for Black Hat, and I know that they have the technical skill to verify
hacks.  Frankly, given past hacker antics, faking vulnerabilities for
the sake of getting attention at Black Hat was inevitable. Considering
the trouble last year's Michael Lynn's presentation caused, one would
think there'd be a serious push to verify what researchers were
presenting at this year's conference. Obviously, one would be wrong.

Genuine security researchers would not wait to reveal vulnerabilities
at Black Hat. They would contact the vendor responsibly as soon as
they discover the problem to have it corrected. On the other hand,
hackers looking to make waves understand the effect of announcing
vulnerabilities at Black Hat in front of all the media, who naturally
write up the announcements themselves as news. Sadly, the upshot is
that the event itself is now less prestigious, as Hayes observes.

Unfortunately, the Black Hat conference's review process for
evaluating new hacks doesn't seem to match the stringency of its
paperwork requirements for nonhacking sessions. With such a flaw in
the system, faked Black Hat demos are all but inevitable. Maybe we
should give these would-be hackers credit: They might not have hacked
Apple or Cisco, but they did hack Black Hat.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:33:23 -0600
From: Jaikumar Vijayan <vijayan@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: RSA: New Threats Make Traditional Antivirus Tools Ineffective


RSA: New threats could make traditional antivirus tools ineffective
by Jaikumar Vijayan

February 06, 2007 (Computerworld) SAN FRANCISCO -- An emerging breed 
of sophisticated malware is raising doubts about the ability of 
traditional signature-based security software to fend off new viruses 
and worms, according to experts at this week's RSA security conference 
here.

Signature-based technologies are now "crumbling under the pressure of 
the number of attacks from cybercriminals," said Art Coviello, president 
of RSA Inc., the security division of EMC Corp. This year alone, about 
200,000 virus variants are expected to be released, he said. At the same 
time, antivirus companies are, on average, at least two months behind in 
tracking malware. And "static" intrusion-detection systems can intercept 
only about 70% of new threats.

"Today, static security products are just security table stakes," 
Coviello said. "Tomorrow, they'll be a complete waste of money. Static 
solutions are not enough for dynamic threats."

What's needed instead are multilayered defenses -- and a more 
information-centric security model, Coviello said. "[Antivirus products] 
may soon be a waste of money, not because viruses and worms will go 
away," but because behavior-blocking and "collective intelligence" 
technologies will be the best way to effectively combat viruses, he said.

Unlike the low-variant, high-volume threats of the past, next-generation 
malware is designed explicitly to beat signature-based defenses by 
coming in low-volume, high-variant waves, said Amir Lev, president of 
Commtouch Software Ltd., an Israeli vendor whose virus-detection engines 
are widely used in several third-party products.

Until last year, most significant e-mail threats aimed for wide 
distribution of the same malicious code, Lev said. The goal in writing 
such code was to infect as many systems as possible before antivirus 
vendors could propagate a signature. Once a signature became available, 
such viruses were relatively easy to block.

New server-side polymorphic viruses threats like the recent Storm worm, 
however, contain a staggering number of distinct, low-volume and 
short-lived variants and are impossible to stop with a single signature, 
Lev said. Typically, such viruses are distributed in successive waves of 
attacks in which each variant tries to infect as many systems as 
possible and stops spreading before antivirus vendors have a chance to 
write a signature for it.

Storm had more than 40,000 distinct variants and was distributed in 
short, rapid-fire bursts of activity in an effort to overwhelm 
signature- and behavior-based antivirus engines, Lev said.

By the time a signature is released for one variant, it has often 
already stopped circulating and has been replaced by several other 
variants, he said. As a result, such viruses can infect a network and 
remain undetected by signature-based systems, he said. Examples of 
polymorphic, server-side viruses include Stration/Warezov and the Happy 
New Year virus.

Hackers have begun employing the same techniques with self-mutating 
Trojan programs, said Eugene Kaspersky, founder of security vendor 
Kaspersky Lab Inc. Such Trojans are planted on malicious Web sites and 
can mutate with every download, making them very hard to detect. The 
result: Each user who visits a Web site infected with such a Trojan can 
be infected with a different version of the same program.

Increasingly, hackers are using "special mutating technology" that 
allows them to inject random "junk" into Trojan program code before 
compiling and compressing it to create separate variants, each of which 
requires a separate signature to block it, Kaspersky said.

"We have to develop a special utility to extract this junk out of the 
malicious code, but it takes time" because each Trojan is a distinct 
variant, he said. So far, efforts to develop an automated tool for 
fighting such Trojans have proved "challenging," Kaspersky said.

An early example of a mutating Trojan was Swizzor, a Trojan download 
program discovered early last year that used a "packer" tool to encrypt 
the code and evade detection by signature-based tools. Swizzor repacked 
itself once per minute and recompiled itself once every hour to get past 
virus defenses.

The use of polymorphic code to mutate malware -- combined with 
encryption to evade detection -- are only a couple of the techniques 
being used by malicious hackers to evade signature-based tools.

Modern malware programs are also designed to split themselves into 
several co-dependent components once they are installed on a system, to 
make them harder to locate and remove. Each fragment or component keeps 
track of the others, and when an attempt is made to delete one 
component, the remaining fragment instantly respawns or reinstalls it.

One example of such malware is WinTools, which has been around since 
2004 and installs a toolbar, along with three separate components, on 
infected systems. Attempts to remove any part of the malware cause the 
other parts to simply replace the deleted files and restart them. The 
fragmented nature of such code makes it harder to write removal scripts 
and to know whether all malicious code has actually been cleaned off a 
computer.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html

------------------------------

From: me@privacy.net
Subject: Use Skype WITHOUT Instaling Software?
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:03:41 -0600


Anyway to use Skype on a computer say at a library where you can NOT
install the software?

------------------------------

Subject: CommunicationsDirect News Daily Update
From: communicationsdirect_daily <communicationsdirect@communicationsdirect>
Reply-To: communicationsdirect_daily-owner@communicationsdirectnews.com
Date: Wed,  7 Feb 2007 10:38:49 EST


********************************
PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents
The CommunicationsDirect Daily Update
For February 07, 2007
********************************

Helio Signs 70,000, Pulls EarthLink into the Red
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22565?11228

     EarthLink has announced its fourth-quarter results and widened the
     swing to losses that started in the previous quarter as it manages
     the transition from narrowband and dial-up ISP to a provider of
     broadband, voice, mobile, and wireless data ...

VimpelCom Targets SMEs with Launch of Ogo Service
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22559?11228

     Russia's second-largest mobile operator, VimpelCom, has selected
     IXI Mobile for the provision of mobile data services using Ogo
     technology, reports PR Newswire Europe. The Ogo solution will
     facilitate push email, ICQ instant messaging service, and RSS
     support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Neither
     financial details of ...

Music Lessons
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/22556?11228

     There's music -- and money -- in the air for mobile phone
     carriers.  After years of eager anticipation, mobile downloading
     and streaming has arrived in a big way, arguably becoming this
     decade's most important mobile trend. There's certainly big bucks
     at stake.  Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.-based market research
     firm, ...

Vodafone Signs Deal With MySpace, Allowing Users to Update Web Pages
 From Their Handset
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/22554?11228

     LONDON -- Vodafone Group PLC said Wednesday it has signed an
     exclusive partnership deal with networking Web site MySpace, allowing
     its customers to access and update their MySpace pages from their
     mobile phone. MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc.,
     said that the deal marked its first foray into the European cell
     phone ...

Ericsson Lifts Lid on Multimedia
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/22552?11228

     Ericsson AB is set to unveil its multimedia strategy at the 3GSM
     show in Barcelona next week, and gave a glimpse Monday of how it aims
     to address carriers' entertainment needs with news of a global
     mobile content deal.   The vendor's new Multimedia business
     unit, formed when the Swedish giant revamped its operations in ...

Motorola's Euro Q
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22548?11228

     Motorola Inc. is likely to launch a 3G UMTS version of its Q
     smartphone at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona next week. This
     could help open up new markets for the device, which has so far
     only been available as a CDMA device that has seen modest sales
     in the U.S.  Analysts are predicting that Motorola could make its
     Q move in ...

FCC Order: Right Move at the Right Time
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/130/22546?11228

     The FCC is considering classifying wireless broadband Internet
     access service as an information service, not a
     telecommunications service.  According to FCC Chairman Kevin
     Martin, assigning the 'information service' designation
     would result in far less regulation and would eliminate
     unnecessary regulatory barriers for service ...

 From Namibia To Virginia, Copper Thefts Plague Telcos
http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/22544?11228

     It's indeed a small world: Both Verizon and Telecom Namibia today
     issued urgent statements condemning the theft of miles of copper
     cables from their networks, crippling phone service in affected
     areas. Thieves are apparently stealing the copper and selling
     it for scrap. Telecom Namibia says service is being lost to
     rural ...


Your feedback on our e-letter is always welcome. Send email to:
CommunicationsDirect Editor <telecom_direct_editor@us.pwc.com>

Copyright (C) 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers.

------------------------------

From: T <nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net>
Subject: Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services?
Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 07:37:08 -0500


In article <telecom26.38.5@telecom-digest.org>, cnavarro@wcnet.org
says:

> On 5 Feb 2007 07:34:17 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although what you say is correct, telco
>>> had very strict rules on things. For example, a pair of wires from
>>> point A to point B which did not go near an 'actual phone line' but
>>> was still used for communication purposes was regulated according to
>>> Bell rules and defined as a 'private line' according to their
>>> rules.

>> Many large organizations, such as a transit system, city government,
>> or large manufacturing plant, had their own private telephone
>> networks.  As I understand it, these networks were not
>> interconnected with Bell and operated and maintained by the owner.
>> In the 1960s and even 1970s you would see two phones on a desk, a
>> typical Bell 500 set, and then an obviously old AE (Automatic
>> Electric) phone, with a fabric cord, the metalic stripe accents on
>> the handset, etc.  I doubt that the owners of such systems paid Bell
>> anything for them, otherwise, they would've interconnected and been
>> more up to date.

>> The Phila public schools had a modest PAX (private automatic exchange)
>> in most schools for internal use within the school.  Each classroom
>> had a non-dial phone. When the handset lifted it rang in the school
>> office.  The school office phone had a dial.  No interconnection to
>> Bell.  I suspect such a system required only one SxS switch and a few
>> relays.  I understand that system is now gone and now classroom phones
>> have dials, and parents can call a teacher directly, instead of making
>> the teacher come to the school office where the outside line was.
>> (I'd love to know what happened to that gear when replaced.)

> Sure, in a common battery office, you didn't need any moving parts :-)
> A cord board had some number of cord pairs, an attendant headset, and
> a rotary dial mounted on the attendant's desk.  You brought the
> exchange line(s) to a bank of jacks, and the box of relays to sense
> the current of the phones and bring in the signal to the board.  IIRC
> we called them 557 cord boards and they still existed in answering
> services to the mid '80's.  A new-fangled company called Amtelco made
> an add-in that read DID numbers to make it continue to work toward
> 1990.

> ALL of our phones were AE's, after GTE bought us out.  Before that
> there were some North electric gear, like Ericofon's.  I don't
> remember if we had any Stromberg keys, I only remember the AE 187
> mechanical stuff and early 1A1's.  Toward the later days, we still had
> a TON of Leich crossbar in service.

> I remeber that the early PBX's had some sort of out dial restriction,
> whether by tarriff or by preference.  Only the attendant console could
> dial outside, and all the other phones could dial internally, but had
> to dial 0 to make an outside call.  In fact, a Leich console had both
> a dial and a keypad.  The keypad dialed internal numbers and the dial
> outside.

> PAX Steppers only had to have a line finder, first selector, and a
> connector, since the 3 digit numbering plans were easy.  A first
> selector only used levels 1,2,3 and maybe 9 and 0.  The first levels
> went to a connector, the 9 to a trunk, and the 0 to an attendant.

> The last stepper I worked on  in 1980 went to some third world
> country.  Why, I haven't a clue.  More of it probably went to a guy in
> New Philadelphia, OH for precious metals reclamation and landfill.

>> If anyone can offer more about such large private networks used in
>> industry, I would appreciate if you'd post it.

> Of course the most successful private network was some railroad named
> Southern Pacific.  I think they went public about 1980 or so as
> Sprint.

If you really want to uncover the true root of all evil regarding 
corporate dominance of the political sphere, it's that same Southern 
Pacific vs. Santa Clara County in what I believe was 1860. That's when 
corporates got the false notion that they should have the same rights as 
a living human being. That little notion was inserted by a clerk in the 
pocket of Southern Pacific and Justice Harlan made sure he referenced it 
at the beginning of the case, thereby permanently encoding it in law. 

So Sprint is the ultimate recipient of that ruling. 

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Historical Rules About Private Line Services?
Date: 7 Feb 2007 07:36:43 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of the larger private systems was
> 'Unitel'  which was the United Airlines private network. I recall
> when we discovered a seven digit local number in Elk Grove, IL termin-
> ated on tne Unitel network and the type of things which could be done
> on that network. ...

>  Both Unitel and Stanotel were very unusual hybrid systems, and I
> expect, quite expensive to maintain, but apparently _less expensive_
> than toll charges had the Bell System been used.  PAT]

Were the above networks truly "private", that is, owned, maintained,
and operated by the corporations?  Since you could dial into them from
the outside, it sounds like they were Bell provided "SCAN" networks.
I forgot what SCAN stands for, but many very large corporations had
(have) them to interconnect different locations.  It was basically a
sophisticated network of WATS, tie-lines, and FX lines*.  A telephone
would have two numbers on the number card, one the regular Bell number
and one the SCAN number.  To use SCAN, users typically dialed 8 (or
another access code), then the SCAN number.  On some systems, you
could get an outside line in a distant city to avoid toll charges.
They are still in use today.

The outside access was to allow employees, such as salesman, to call
in and connect anywhere without toll charges.

Years ago employees of such companies would love such systems because
it enabled them to call friends/relatives in distant cities without
toll charges.  The corporation might not be paying for an individual
call, but it did have to pay for the tie-lines and heavy personal use
meant it had to add more very expensive WATS or tie- or FX lines.

* A tie-line is a trunk that interconnects two separate PBX systems.
A "FX" foreign exchange is a telephone line that is served by a
distant city.  This enables callers to reach a company via a local
call and a company to call that distant place without toll charges.
An example of use is major resorts having reservation lines to big
cities.  For example, Catskill resorts would have tie lines to New
York City, Pocono resorts would have tie lines to Philadelphia.  On
the switchboard tie lines had special heavy wire since they had higher
line voltage to accomodate the distance.

Also, many suburban businesses and residences had FX to a city
exchange to avoid paying message unit charges in both directions.  For
businesses this is a consideration.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although Stanotel was always closely
guarded against outside intrusion, the only reason Unitel was wide
open was due to stupidity; the manager of same did not know how to
block any sort of intrusion. One of the first things I did after 
learning about Unitel was verify the local Elk Grove numbers. Using
the old, stale trick of dialing a 'local' (9-level) call as a zero
plus call to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City person to
person to Mr. Smith, I asked my operator to leave word if Mr. Smith
had not yet checked in. "Surely," she responded, and told the Waldorf-
Astoria operator to leave word for Mr. Smith, asking 'him' to call
Operator 7 in Chicago and that the number calling was (whatever). Had
I simply dialed the operator and asked what my number was, I would 
have been told I should know my own number, and refused any further
information. _Thank you_, operator. Two or three months later, I
discovered the inbound number for Unitel was no longer getting 
answered, so on a hunch I dialed the formerly _outbound_ number, and
as I suspected, it was answered by dial tone. The only thing the
foolish people had done was swap the two numbers in the plug-in
call-extender device. That was _their_ notion of what security was
all about (this was the 1980's). So, Lisa, strictly speaking, Unitel
nor Stanotel were intended for 'public' use. 

A third example of this was Chicago, Nilwaukee and Northwestern
Railroad which had a large office in Chicago, wherein they had a 
Dimension PBX. No one from telco ever bothered to explain to any
railroad employees that Dimension always had a remote port on it
for 'testing and repair' purposes, with its own distinct phone number
on that line. Nor did they ever explain that the passcode on such
systems was factory-defaulted to four zeros, i.e. '0000'.  The rail-
road found out the hard way on that; a phone bill one month in the
thousands of dollars. The last thing I heard (late 1970's) two
Illinois Bell Security guys were roaming around up in Minnesota trying
to track down recipients of phone calls.   PAT]

------------------------------


TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm-
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*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from                  *
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The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College
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Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at
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   In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert
   have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and
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All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the
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End of TELECOM Digest V26 #39
*****************************