Phreaking boxes are devices used by Phone Phreaks

Phreaking

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. As telephone networks have become computerized, phreaking has become closely...

 to perform various functions normally reserved for operators and other telephone company employees.

Most phreaking boxes are named after colours, due to folklore surrounding the earliest boxes which suggested that the first ones of each kind were housed in a box or casing of that colour. However, very few physical specimens of phreaking boxes are actually the colour for which they are named.

Most phreaking boxes are electronic devices which interface directly with a telephone line and manipulate the line or the greater system in some way through either by generating audible tones that invoke switching functions (for example, the blue box), or by manipulating the electrical characteristics of the line to disrupt normal line function (for example, the black box

Black box (phreaking)

The black box , was a small electronic circuit added to a telephone which provided the caller with a free call...

). However a few boxes can use mechanical or acoustic methods - for example, it was possible to use a pair of properly tuned whistles as a red box.

Among the most well-known phreaking boxes were the black box, which tricked switching equipment into believing a call had not been answered when in fact it had, resulting in free incoming long distance calls; the beige box

Beige box (phreaking)

In phone phreaking, a beige box is a device that is technically equivalent to a telephone company lineman's handset — a telephone fitted with alligator clips to attach it to a line.-Construction:...

, which is an improvised lineman's handset typically made from a one-piece telephone and alligator clips; the blue box which emulated the in-band signaling tones once used by long distance operators and switching equipment; and the red box, which emulated the tones generated by payphones when coins were deposited.

Today, most phreaking boxes are obsolete due to changes in telephone technology.

List of phreaking boxes

• Magenta box
  Magenta box
  A magenta box is a device used to simulate an incoming call by applying the AC ringing signal voltage to a POTS line to make the telephones on that line ring...
  
  
• Red box
• Orange box
  Orange box
  An orange box is a piece of hardware or software that emulates caller ID FSK signals to spoof caller ID information on the target's caller ID terminal. It takes advantage of call waiting caller ID by mimicking the phone company's central office equipment and sending the call waiting tone followed...
  
  
• Green box
  Green box (phreaking)
  In Phreaking, the Green box was a device whose function was to manipulate the coin collection mechanism of Payphones. It employed three of the MF tones used in the Blue box and could be viewed as a subset of that device.- Operation :...
  
  
• Blue box
• Beige box
  Beige box (phreaking)
  In phone phreaking, a beige box is a device that is technically equivalent to a telephone company lineman's handset — a telephone fitted with alligator clips to attach it to a line.-Construction:...
  
  
• Black box
  Black box (phreaking)
  The black box , was a small electronic circuit added to a telephone which provided the caller with a free call...
  
  
• Vermilion box
  Vermilion box
  The vermilion box is a hypothetical portable improvised line emulator.Its function is to spoof not only caller ID but every other aspect of an incoming telephone call, including ringing and DC line voltage...
  
  
• Gold box
  Gold box (phreaking)
  The Gold Box is a Phreaking Box whose function is to create a bridge between two telephone lines. In its basic operation, the user calls one of the lines, the Gold box answers and connects the two lines together, yielding the dial tone of the second line to the user...
  
  
• Clear box
  Clear box (phreaking)
  A clear box is an amplifier used by phreaks to use post-pay pay phones without paying. In some locations, especially rural areas in the United States and Canada, pay phones were configured for "post-pay" operation. In this mode, the handset microphone is muted until payment is made...
  
  
• Silver box
  Silver box
  A silver box is a modified DTMF keypad that adds the four additional keys used in the now-obsolete autovon phone system. This was usually accomplished with the addition of a toggle switch and a crystal that switched one column of a standard phone keypad into the "fourth column" used in the Autovon...
  
  

External links

• Fixer's Box Review - An exhaustive list of phreaking boxes and their flaws
• The Definitive Guide to Phreak Boxes This is the list that was published on 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
  2600: The Hacker Quarterly
  2600: The Hacker Quarterly is an American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer "underground" and left wing, and sometimes ,...
  
  , Volume 19 Number 1 (Spring 2002 issue), page 15, on the author's website (ElfQrin.com).