==)--- P TO PAUSE S TO STOP ---(==

  Exploring Caves in Travlenet
  
   One fine summer day several years ago, a phone phreak 
discovered yet another interesting telephone number. What was 
it? A modem? A dialtone? A very special operator? no to all of 
the above--this was something truly amazing and unique. This is TRAVELNET.
   Of course, he didn't know at the time what he had dial into.
But this is what he heard. Two rings, a tone that lasted for 
about half a second (it had about the same pitch of a Sprint 
tone), and then a voice! Not just a recording, not just a human 
asking what it was you wanted, but a recording asking you what 
it was you wanted! Sort of like hearing an answering machine 
for the first time. But this was no answering machine.

 "Authorization number, please" a sensual, husky female voice 
asked. And since he was a rather clever guy, he hit his touch 
tone keypad. Every time he entered a tone, he heard a short 
"booop", like an acknowledgement of some sort. After four of 
these "booops" the automated lady came back and said 
"eighteightsevenzero." But, alas,those were not the keys he 
hit. In semi-desperation, he hit another key. The female voice 
came back and said "Please repeat, yes or no?" But what was the 
question? He quickly realized that she must have been somehow 
trying to confirm the entry of his numbers. But how do you 
convey the word "no" on a touch tone keypad?
  
 He went through the whole process again and wound up getting 
dumped into a recording that said (in an authoritative female 
voice) "The Travelnet number you dialed is incorrect; please 
check the number and dial again."
  
 He called back. Again he tried entering numbers and tried to 
figure out why they wouldn't correspond. All of the sudden, his
baby sister (who had been growing increasingly bored with a 
rattle in the next room), decided to let out the sort of scream 
that baby sisters are known for. What's important about this is
that after the scream was over, our friend heard quite 
distinctly over the telephone lines:"booop."
   "Wow,"he said, 'Booop," it repeated.  It recognized speech! 
He called it back and started entering numbers with his voice. 
It worked! After four numbers were entered, it would repeat 
them back to him and he had the option of saying either "yes" 
or "no". If he said "yes" or remained silent, he had the 
opportunity to enter four more numbers. If he said "no" the 
machine would make every effort to find out what the number was 
by asking him twice just what it was he meant to say. There 
were a few simple rules--he had to emunciate clearly and say 
the word "zero" instead of "oh".
  But what would this lady let him do if he quessed the right 
eight numbers? And how could he possibly get such a long number 
anyway. Would he have to call up the lady and slowly and 
patiently pronounce little words over and over? Since he knew 
there were over 100,000,000 possible combinations and that no 
more than a thousand probably worked, he understood that it 
would take some thinking to satisfy the mechanical voice. He 
needed to find some good old-fashioned human incompetence. If 
the machine had trouble hearing him, or if he remained silent, 
it would eventually say, "Sorry, we're having difficulties." 
Then it would connect him to a human. He stuck on the line and 
when the operator answered, he asked her what number he had 
dialed. "This General Motors Travelnet, sir," she replied. "I'm 
terribly sorry, "he said. "I was trying to get the speaking 
clock." "That's okay," the operator said, "Goodbye."
   So it was General Motor! This would be easy. He waited a day 
and called back. He got connected to another operator, who 
asked him what he wanted. "This is J.C. Steppleworth form Fort 
Wayne GMAC,"he snarled. "And I've been having trouble using 
this confounded phone system. It was used to make phone calls, 
which he sort of suspected. After your eight-digit code, you 
enter a ten-digit phone number or, if dialing internally within
General Motors, a seven digit number. The recording even spoke 
a demo authorization code to get the point across. After 
hearing this, our friend wondered if he should try the demo 
code. "No." he decided. "They couldn't possible be that stupid.
"He tried it anyway and guess what? The moment he confirmed the 
last number, the lovely voice asked a new question: 
"Destination code, please?" (In other words, the phone number 
you're trying to call.)
   It was an extender--a long and short distance phone service.
He proceeded to test it out, and he found that he could call 
virtually anywhere in the country for free. But who cares about 
free calls? He wanted to explore. And explore he did. He tried 
many things and learned many things. He found that he could 
avoid the lady voice if he keypadded in the numbers before she 
could speak. This way the call would go through normally 
without any arguments on pronunciation. This allowed him to 
test many, many codes without much hassle. He found that by 
mixing up his working code a little., he was able to find many 
new ones. The simplicity was atounding. In a short time, he had 
found literally hundreds of codes. After this, he sat down one 
day and stared at his list of codes. All of a sudded, he 
relized something. Each group of four added up to either 9, 19,
or 29-a sort of base-nine code. He wrote a short program and 
printed out all possible four-digit combination that added up 
to these magic numbers. He was set for life.
   He used the system to explore internal offices. If no area 
code was entered, every exchange put you in a different part 
you in a different part of the country. One exchange, 999, 
simply dumped him into a feed from a Detroit radio station. One 
day, his Demon-dialer, which is basically a touch tone 
generator with a memory, came across a re-order (a fast busy 
signal) that turned into a dialtone in twenty seconds. The 
connection wasn't great, but he found that he could make a 
direct call anywhere. He could dial overseas directly. He 
figured that he was at the switchboard of some office branch 
far away form where he originally called. He found out what the
number was by calling a friend peron-to-person collect, who 
then asked the operator for the number so that the "person" 
could call back when he returned. When he called up the number 
he was dialing from, they answered, "GMAC." So it was some 
distant office that he was making his calls out of, using a 
Travelnet code and an internal number to get there. It was so 
roundabout that he knew nobody would figure it out. In fact, 
several people that he called received calls from that office 
asking if they knew anybody who worked there that would call 
them at three in the morning. It was incredible! Even if a 
friend had a wanted to frame him, it was doubtful that they 
would connect him with this distant city from which the call 
supposedly emanated. And the funny thing was that the company 
was probably placing a 24-hour armed guard on the building, 
thinking that someone was breaking in and making calls. Someone 
was, but in a way they could never figure out.
   There's much more to the world of Travelnet, particularly on 
their internal network. And the same, number works to this very
day, which, by the way, is toll-free. But we've heard of cases 
where people have been trapped into paying for what they did 
and it's quite likely the system is heavily monitored.
 similar system called WIN was used by Westinghouse before 
they gave up in disgust after their lines were constantly tied 
up by phreakers and hackers. Honeywell makes the actual system 
and there are others in use around the country-one, we hear, 
for the state offices of Illinois, another Ralston-Purina-the 
folks who blow up sewers in Louisville,KY.
   As usual, nobody at travelnet understood any of the 
questions we asked them and no one returned our calls. Maybe 
the lines were all tied up.

DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS