Blue box
Device for hacking telephone networks / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. This allowed an illicit user, referred to as a "phreaker", to place long-distance calls, without using the network's user facilities, that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network.
First developed in the 1960s and used by a small phreaker community, the introduction of low-cost microelectronics in the early 1970s greatly simplified these devices to the point where they could be constructed by anyone reasonably competent with a soldering iron or breadboard construction. Soon after, models of relatively low quality were being offered fully assembled, but these often required tinkering by the user to remain operational.
The long-distance network became digitized, replacing the audio call-control tones with out-of-band signaling methods in the form of common-channel signaling (CCS) carried digitally on a separate channel inaccessible to the telephone user. The audio-tone-based blue boxes were of limited use by the 1980s, and of little use today.