07-16, 12:00–13:30 (US/Pacific), Hardware Hacking Stage
Grab a soldering iron and build your own phone-phreakin' blue box! Learn to hack like it's 1974 - and practice your skills on the Shadytel phone network. 25 kits based on an open-source design will be made available for purchase prior to and during the event. Plan to spend 1-2 hours with us if you are familiar with soldering, or ~4 hours if you are a beginner.
A blue box is a device that produces special signalling tones that were used within the long-distance telephone network. Used by famous phreaks such as Evan Doorbell, Ben Decibel, Steve Wozniak and Mark Bernay, the multi-frequency tones generated by blue boxes and red boxes could be used to route telephone calls, host chat lines, or fool a payphone into thinking coins have been deposited.
Come and build a blue box with our engineering experts, and learn how to use it from an experienced phone phreak!
While you probably can't use the bluebox on the real phone network anymore (and we would never condone such action!) you just might be able to use it on the Shadytel network...
TBD