John T. Draper

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John T. Draper at Maker Faire Berlin 2015

John Thomas Draper aka Captain Crunch (* 1944 ) is an American hacker and software developer. He was responsible for the implementation of the Forth programming language and the first word processor for Apple computers, "Easywriter". In the 1970s, Draper became involved with hacking and was a pioneer in bypassing technical barriers. He made phone phreaking known with the help of the Bluebox , with which one could call for free during analog phone times, and was imprisoned for it. Draper was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club .

Life

Cap'n Crunch , toy pipe (2600 Hz).

John Draper studied engineering and used radio equipment in his spare time . In the 1960s he worked as a technician for the US Air Force .

Draper was nicknamed Captain Crunch after a breakfast cereal brand known in the USA called Cap'n Crunch . A toy flute that could produce two tones was included in the pack during a promotion. One of them had a frequency of 2600 Hertz (referred to in music as e '' ''). Whistling this tone into the telephone receiver - with two additional codes - was able to make free calls worldwide in the analog telephone world of the 1970s; At that time, the signaling data (i.e. who was calling where) and what was being said ran on the same line (in-band signaling ) . The telephone companies later separated the signals (outband signaling) so that this manipulation was no longer possible. Draper had got his phreaking tips from a schoolboy in California he came into contact with while testing a pirate radio station .

The blind young man Joe Engressia alias Joybubbles had discovered the peculiarities of the telephone frequencies. He could whistle the 2600 Hertz he needed with his mouth without a flute. Draper popularized this hack. With the help of friends he was able to further develop the methods of telephone phreaking: They recorded 2600 Hz on tape and were thus able to “manipulate” any telephone (blue boxing). The method used a weakness of the dual tone system's (DTMF; engl .: Dual Tone Multi-Frequency ) from. While Draper viewed the worldwide free telephone call as a technical phenomenon and published it, criminals quickly exploited the technology of the Bluebox for their own purposes.

Draper often redirected his own phone calls to himself in seven countries around the world, causing or making a 20-second delay audible. Even the mafia showed an interest in his knowledge. In 1971 the hippies also discovered various possibilities in connection with this method of free telephone calls. A more militant branch of the hippies, known as the Yippies , founded a magazine called the Youth International Party Line (YIPL) , the aim of which was to highlight and publicize all kinds of phone fraud.

In 1971, Esquire Magazine published an extensive article by journalist Ron Rosenbaum about the phreaking scene and Captain Crunch, who was still anonymous at the time, which led to investigations by the US telephone company AT&T and the FBI. The following year, Draper was arrested and given a five-year suspended sentence. Due to a parole violation of all contact with the phreaking scene, he spent the time from October 1976 to February 1977 in Lompoc State Prison, California . Here, Draper said he was teaching fellow inmates in matters of phreaking, i.e. telephone hacking. He also listened to the guards' radio communications.

In the 1970s, Draper made the acquaintance of the later Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak . They kept giving him orders. During his imprisonment in California, for example, he developed the EasyWriter program , the first word processor that came with the Apple II . Later Draper ported the program for IBM PCs . The programming environment, a version of the Forth programming language tailored to the Apple II, came from himself.

literature

Web links

Commons : John T. Draper  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.robson.org/gary/a-blacklisted1.php
  2. ↑ http://www.historyofphonephreaking.org/docs/rosenbaum1971.pdf
  3. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/business/the-odyssey-of-a-hacker-from-outlaw-to-consultant.html
  4. ↑ Captain Crunch on His Legacy, Secret White House Hotlines, and How to Teach Mexican Drug Dealers Phreakening. (No longer available online.) In: Interview at digitalista.de. February 22, 2015, formerly in the original ; accessed on March 15, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.digitalista.de  
personal data
SURNAME Draper, John T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cap'n Crunch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American hacker and software developer
DATE OF BIRTH 1944