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Exploring Caves in Travlenet
One fine summer day several years ago, a phone phreak
discovered yet another interesting telephone number. What was
it? A modem? A dialtone? A very special operator? no to all of
the above--this was something truly amazing and unique. This is TRAVELNET.
Of course, he didn't know at the time what he had dial into.
But this is what he heard. Two rings, a tone that lasted for
about half a second (it had about the same pitch of a Sprint
tone), and then a voice! Not just a recording, not just a human
asking what it was you wanted, but a recording asking you what
it was you wanted! Sort of like hearing an answering machine
for the first time. But this was no answering machine.
"Authorization number, please" a sensual, husky female voice
asked. And since he was a rather clever guy, he hit his touch
tone keypad. Every time he entered a tone, he heard a short
"booop", like an acknowledgement of some sort. After four of
these "booops" the automated lady came back and said
"eighteightsevenzero." But, alas,those were not the keys he
hit. In semi-desperation, he hit another key. The female voice
came back and said "Please repeat, yes or no?" But what was the
question? He quickly realized that she must have been somehow
trying to confirm the entry of his numbers. But how do you
convey the word "no" on a touch tone keypad?
He went through the whole process again and wound up getting
dumped into a recording that said (in an authoritative female
voice) "The Travelnet number you dialed is incorrect; please
check the number and dial again."
He called back. Again he tried entering numbers and tried to
figure out why they wouldn't correspond. All of the sudden, his
baby sister (who had been growing increasingly bored with a
rattle in the next room), decided to let out the sort of scream
that baby sisters are known for. What's important about this is
that after the scream was over, our friend heard quite
distinctly over the telephone lines:"booop."
"Wow,"he said, 'Booop," it repeated. It recognized speech!
He called it back and started entering numbers with his voice.
It worked! After four numbers were entered, it would repeat
them back to him and he had the option of saying either "yes"
or "no". If he said "yes" or remained silent, he had the
opportunity to enter four more numbers. If he said "no" the
machine would make every effort to find out what the number was
by asking him twice just what it was he meant to say. There
were a few simple rules--he had to emunciate clearly and say
the word "zero" instead of "oh".
But what would this lady let him do if he quessed the right
eight numbers? And how could he possibly get such a long number
anyway. Would he have to call up the lady and slowly and
patiently pronounce little words over and over? Since he knew
there were over 100,000,000 possible combinations and that no
more than a thousand probably worked, he understood that it
would take some thinking to satisfy the mechanical voice. He
needed to find some good old-fashioned human incompetence. If
the machine had trouble hearing him, or if he remained silent,
it would eventually say, "Sorry, we're having difficulties."
Then it would connect him to a human. He stuck on the line and
when the operator answered, he asked her what number he had
dialed. "This General Motors Travelnet, sir," she replied. "I'm
terribly sorry, "he said. "I was trying to get the speaking
clock." "That's okay," the operator said, "Goodbye."
So it was General Motor! This would be easy. He waited a day
and called back. He got connected to another operator, who
asked him what he wanted. "This is J.C. Steppleworth form Fort
Wayne GMAC,"he snarled. "And I've been having trouble using
this confounded phone system. It was used to make phone calls,
which he sort of suspected. After your eight-digit code, you
enter a ten-digit phone number or, if dialing internally within
General Motors, a seven digit number. The recording even spoke
a demo authorization code to get the point across. After
hearing this, our friend wondered if he should try the demo
code. "No." he decided. "They couldn't possible be that stupid.
"He tried it anyway and guess what? The moment he confirmed the
last number, the lovely voice asked a new question:
"Destination code, please?" (In other words, the phone number
you're trying to call.)
It was an extender--a long and short distance phone service.
He proceeded to test it out, and he found that he could call
virtually anywhere in the country for free. But who cares about
free calls? He wanted to explore. And explore he did. He tried
many things and learned many things. He found that he could
avoid the lady voice if he keypadded in the numbers before she
could speak. This way the call would go through normally
without any arguments on pronunciation. This allowed him to
test many, many codes without much hassle. He found that by
mixing up his working code a little., he was able to find many
new ones. The simplicity was atounding. In a short time, he had
found literally hundreds of codes. After this, he sat down one
day and stared at his list of codes. All of a sudded, he
relized something. Each group of four added up to either 9, 19,
or 29-a sort of base-nine code. He wrote a short program and
printed out all possible four-digit combination that added up
to these magic numbers. He was set for life.
He used the system to explore internal offices. If no area
code was entered, every exchange put you in a different part
you in a different part of the country. One exchange, 999,
simply dumped him into a feed from a Detroit radio station. One
day, his Demon-dialer, which is basically a touch tone
generator with a memory, came across a re-order (a fast busy
signal) that turned into a dialtone in twenty seconds. The
connection wasn't great, but he found that he could make a
direct call anywhere. He could dial overseas directly. He
figured that he was at the switchboard of some office branch
far away form where he originally called. He found out what the
number was by calling a friend peron-to-person collect, who
then asked the operator for the number so that the "person"
could call back when he returned. When he called up the number
he was dialing from, they answered, "GMAC." So it was some
distant office that he was making his calls out of, using a
Travelnet code and an internal number to get there. It was so
roundabout that he knew nobody would figure it out. In fact,
several people that he called received calls from that office
asking if they knew anybody who worked there that would call
them at three in the morning. It was incredible! Even if a
friend had a wanted to frame him, it was doubtful that they
would connect him with this distant city from which the call
supposedly emanated. And the funny thing was that the company
was probably placing a 24-hour armed guard on the building,
thinking that someone was breaking in and making calls. Someone
was, but in a way they could never figure out.
There's much more to the world of Travelnet, particularly on
their internal network. And the same, number works to this very
day, which, by the way, is toll-free. But we've heard of cases
where people have been trapped into paying for what they did
and it's quite likely the system is heavily monitored.
similar system called WIN was used by Westinghouse before
they gave up in disgust after their lines were constantly tied
up by phreakers and hackers. Honeywell makes the actual system
and there are others in use around the country-one, we hear,
for the state offices of Illinois, another Ralston-Purina-the
folks who blow up sewers in Louisville,KY.
As usual, nobody at travelnet understood any of the
questions we asked them and no one returned our calls. Maybe
the lines were all tied up.
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