His box worked, and he started using it to call special phone company numbers where many people could talk at the same time. These numbers were constantly used by phreaks to share information. On one of these lines, someone suggested that John take a hacking nickname, so he chose "Cap"n Crunch" because he had discovered that a whistle from a box of the cereal made the 2600 MHz tone, the phone company tone that gave you complete access to the system (Thomas 18).
A writer named Ron Rosenbaum began talking to a lot of phreakers for an article he was writing for Esquire magazine. Eventually, he got in contact with the blind kids who brought up Draper's name without his permission. His name was printed in the article, and the authorities started to keep an eye on him ("Cap"n Crunch in Cyberspace," 2003).
Eventually, he was arrested and spent time in minimum-security prison before his trial. In jail, the criminals beat him up until he agreed to teach them the tricks of the phreaking tradr. Being able to make untraceable free calls would certainly help them in their activities on the outside ("Cap"n Crunch in Cyberspace," 2003).
Draper was sentenced to five months of probation. He dabbled in phreaking a little more but eventually he got into computers. He became friends with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the co-founders of Apple Computer. He wrote the first word processing program for the Apple, and his programming eventually made him a millionaire (Schnell, 2002).
Today, blue box phreaking is no longer possible because phone networks no longer use the old tone switching systems. The only way to make free long distance calls is to use a "red box", a device that mimics the tones of payphones when change is inserted. However, it is rare now for a payphone to even accept coins as payment, and even if did it most payphones are modified to prevent red boxes from working (Phone Losers, 2002).
From Phreaks to Hackers.
