John T. Draper (born 1944), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after Cap'n Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), is a former phone phreak. Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For information on the phone phreak called Captain Crunch, see John Draper. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... It has been suggested that Evan Doorbell be merged into this article or section. ...

Draper was the son of a U.S. Air Force engineer; he described his father as distant in an interview published on the front page of the Jan 13-14, 2007, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Draper himself entered the Air Force in 1964, and while stationed in Alaska helped his fellow servicemen make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1968, and did military-related work for several employers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He adopted the counterculture of the times and operated a pirate radio station out of a Volkswagen van. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an international daily newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company in New York City, New York, USA, with Asian and European editions, and a worldwide daily circulation of more than 2 million as of 2006, with 931,000 paying online subscribers. ...

A blind friend of John Draper's named Joe Engressia (later known as Joybubbles) informed him that a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could be easily modified to emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz—the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call.^[1] This would effectively disconnect one end of the trunk, allowing the still connected side to enter an operator mode. Experimenting with this whistle inspired Draper to build blue boxes: electronic devices capable of reproducing other tones used by the phone company. This article is about the visual condition. ... Joybubbles (May 25, 1949 – August 8, 2007), born Josef Carl Engressia, Jr. ... A whistle is a one-note woodwind instrument which produces sound from a stream of forced air. ... 2600 Hz is the frequency in hertz (cycles per second) that AT&T formerly put as a steady signal on any long-distance telephone line that was not currently in use. ... This article is about the current AT&T. For the 1885-2005 company, see American Telephone & Telegraph. ... See also long line (topology) and long-line fishing. ... In telecommunication, the term trunk has the following meanings: In a communications network, a single transmission channel between two points that are switching centers or nodes, or both. ... The blue box previously owned by Steve Wozniak, on display at the Computer History Museum. ...

“I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if I do it, I do it for one reason and one reason only. I'm learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore a system. Computers, systems, that's my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer.” — From Secrets of the Little Blue Box by Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire Magazine (October 1971)

The class of vulnerabilities Draper and others discovered was limited to call routing switches that employed in-band signaling, whereas newer equipment relies almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling, the use of separate circuits to transmit voice and signals. Though they could no longer serve practical use, the Cap'n Crunch whistles did become valued collector's items. Some hackers sometimes go by the handle “Captain Crunch” even today; as a result of this incident 2600 The Hacker Quarterly is named after this whistle frequency. The expense of sustaining the unbilled phone calls, the redesign of the line protocols and the accelerated equipment replacement due to the blue box is difficult to calculate, or even to separate from something as complex and dynamic as the telephone long-distance network, but it is generally acknowledged to be a huge sum. Ron Rosenbaum (born on November 27, 1946, New York, New York) is an American journalist and author. ... Esquire is a magazine for men owned by the Hearst Corporation. ... Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with In-band signalling. ... In telecommunications, the term out-of-band signaling has the following meanings: 1. ... A collectors item is an object or item of any kind that has become valuable -- often unexpectedly. ... (Redirected from 2600 The Hacker Quarterly) Fall 2004 (21:3) 2600 Issue 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is a traditional (printed) magazine named for the fact that phreakers in the 1960s found that the transmission of a 2600 Hertz tone (which could be produced perfectly with a plastic toy whistle given...

The 1971 Esquire Magazine article which told the world about phone phreaking got Draper in hot water. Draper was arrested on toll fraud charges in 1972 and sentenced to five years' probation. The article also brought him to the attention of Steve Wozniak. In the mid 1970s he taught his phone phreaking skills to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who later founded Apple Computer.^[1] He was briefly employed at Apple, and created a telephone interface board for the Apple II personal computer.^[1] Wozniak has said that the reason that the board was never marketed was that Woz was the only one in the company who liked Draper^[2] and partially due to Draper's arrest and conviction for wire fraud in 1977. Draper wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple II, in 1979. According to the Wall Street Journal, he hand-wrote the code while serving nights in the Alameda County Jail, then entered the code later into a computer. However, another account had him writing the code as he served his four-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, California. Whether in the form of the consumer attempting to defraud the telephone company, the telephone company attempting to defraud the consumer, or a third party attempting to defraud either of them, fraud has been a part of the telephone system almost from the beginning. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder and CEO of Apple and was the CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney. ... Stephan Gary Woz Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer and the co-founder of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc. ... Apple Inc. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... Also: 1977 (album) by Ash. ... EasyWriter is a word processor released when the IBM PC was announced in 1981. ... Lompoc, the City of Arts and Flowers Lompoc (pronounced Lahm poke) is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Largest metro area Greater Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ...

Draper later ported EasyWriter to the IBM PC, beating Bill Gates on the bid for the IBM contract. Draper's company, Capn' Software, posted less than $1 million revenue over six years, and he subsequently sued his software's distributor, Bill Baker, over an unauthorized version of EasyWriter that Baker released. In the 1980s, Draper worked for Autodesk, but was laid off. His eccentric behavior sometimes led to difficulties with potential clients. Currently he writes computer security software, is senior developer of KanTalk![1] VoIP software for teen singer/software model Kandice Melonakos[2], and he hosts an Internet TV show, Crunch TV. IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ... For other persons named Bill Gates, see Bill Gates (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation) and Big Blue. ... Autodesk, Inc. ... IP Telephony, also called Internet telephony, is the technology that makes it possible to have a telephone conversation over the Internet or a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) network instead of dedicated voice transmission lines. ... TV redirects here. ...

One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to "phreak" his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through dozens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. This is just one example of his career in phreaking exploits. Draper was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.^[1] Draper also claimed, in the interview with the Wall Street Journal, that he once managed to place a direct call to the White House and spoke directly with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper told him about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles. Captain Crunch can refer to. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist club in Silicon Valley, which met (under that name) from March 1975 to roughly 1977. ...

John Draper's story inspired several mentions in popular culture. Elements of the movie Sneakers, including the character Whistler, and Cosmo's experience of offering phreaking services to criminals while in prison ^[3]. Moreover, John Draper is specifically mentioned as Captain Crunch in one scene in the Cowboy Bebop Movie, where a hacker mentions that "Cap'n Crunch broke into the national phone system with a plastic whistle." He is also portrayed in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. This article or section contains a plot summary that is overly long or excessively detailed compared to the rest of the article. ... Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) is an unauthorized made-for-television docudrama written and directed by Martyn Burke. ...

References

Stephan Gary Woz Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer and the co-founder of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc. ... W. W. Norton & Company is an American book publishing company that has remained independent since its founding. ... Universal Pictures is the main motion picture production/distribution arm of Universal Studios, a subsidiary of NBC Universal. ...

External links

• John Draper's homepage
• "Captain Crunch" at the Rotten Library
• CrunchTV.net
• Kandice Music
• En2go.com, John Draper is currently CTO
• The Origins of Phreaking - An article from Blacklisted! 411 Magazine by Gary D. Robson
• Interview with John Draper (circa 1995)
• Interview with John Draper on UK Hacker Voice Radio - (January 2006)
• A picture of John Draper at Defcon 13
• Digibarn Interview with John Draper on his work at Autodesk and the BART Ticket fiasco - (May 2006)
• The Twilight Years of Cap'n Crunch, a Wall Street Journal article about Draper's current life
• Discovery_Channel_-_The_History_Of_Hacking_Documentary, Interview with John Draper