1. John Draper
Who is he?
John Thomas Draper, also known as Captain Crunch/Crunch/Crunchman, a well-known computer programmer and
proficient phone phreak in the computer programming world, hacker and security community. He’s an American living
a nomadic lifestyle in general, son of a US air force engineer.
What he does in his life?
• Started off as a pirate radio enthusiast phone phreaking computers
• He built a home radio station from discarded military components
• Helped his service members making free phone calls by devising access to a local telephone switchboard.
• Hacked the AT&T phone system in the late 1960s using a toy whistle that came from a Cap’n Crunch cereal box,
hence getting a fame name of the above.
• Met up with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs (founder of Apple computer) in building a “blue box,” a device that
would hack the network and give the owner free phone calls.
• Jobs and Wozniak went on to become wildly successful with Apple, Draper ended up doing hard time for phone
fraud.
• He was one of the Apple computer pioneers and helping to launch the Apple II, also developed early version of a
modem that allows data transmission over telephone lines.
• Blue box is a multi-frequency device; it combines different tones; there are 700 Hz, 900 Hz, 1100 Hz, 1500 Hz, and
1700 Hz. They are odd frequencies, because that way they won’t interfere with each other. It’s quite a bit different
than touch tones.
• There are also red boxes, used for making free calls from payphones. All it does is just emulate the sound that
operator hears, with money going into the phone. They have the 3-coin payphones: you put in a nickel and it goes
‘ding’; you put in a dime and it goes ‘ding-ding’; you put in a quarter and it goes ‘gong’. And that’s what the
operator hears, and that’s where she knows that you are putting money in the phone.
• Often toured the world and speaking publicly about security flaws in telecommunications, online privacy and
encryption.
