Hacking on Telenet ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Telenet. Or, to be more specific, GTE Telenet. A massive network formed by the people and technology that were used to develop packet switching for the Department of Defense. Telenet was purchased by GTE in 1979 and has been growing in size and revenue ever since. There are quite a few data networks in existence today. Datapac, Autonet, Tymnet, and ARPANET, to name some of the better known. A data network is basically a collection of mainframes, specialized minis, and high-speed lines. Through Telenet, you can connect to literally thousands of computers, all over the country, even the world if you know the proper procedures. All this is possible by making a local phone call, in most parts of the county. [Telenet access numbers are made readily available to the public by Telenet and systems on the network, such as the Source, Compuserve, etc.] Once your modem is connected to Telenet, you have to hit two carriage returns. You'll see: TELENET XXX XXX where the first 3 X's are the area code you're connected to and the rest c omprise the Telenet node identifier. You'll then be asked for your terminal identifier. Usually "D1" works for most terminals, but a simple carriage return is also accepted. At this point you first receive the @ prompt. It is from here that you get places. And that's what's so unique about Telenet - the way in which you get places. You simply type a "C", a space, and the Telenet address. Then you enter the area code of the computer you want to connect to, followed by a two or three digit code. Thats all there is to it. Telenet tells you whether or not you've found a working computer. lf you want to exit from one computer and connect to another, just type an "@". You'll then get the Telenet @ prompt. Before you type the next address, type "D" to disconnect from the computer you're still connected to. Hackers across the country have for years programmed their computers to scan the system for interesting things. All that has to be done is this: Pick the city you want to scan - let's say Boston. The area code is 617. Have your computer start its search at 617001. lf you get connected to a computer, Telenet will skip a line and print 617 001 CONNECTED. lf you don't get connected, there are a variety of messages you could get. 617 001 REJECTING, 617 001 NOT RESPONDING, 617 001 NOT REACHABLE, 617 001 REFUSED COLLECT CONNECTION are a few of them. They all mean basically the same thing - there is no way to hook up to this address. At this point, several things can be done. Naturally you'll want to increment the address by one and search for a computer at address 617002. But how do you have your computer recognize when a connection has been made? This is necessary because you can'tjust keep entering C XXXXXX over and over - once you get connected, you have to enter the "@ to get back to the Telenet prompt, followed by a "D". Of course you could type C XXXXXX, followed by "@", followed by "D" for every attempt, but that can get rather time consuming. It's better simply to be able to save to disk or output to a printer the addresses of connections. And, fortunately for hackers, Telenet makes that very easy. You can either search for a string that has the word "CONNECT" in it somewhere- the only time you'd find one would be when you got the CONNECTED message. But as we mentioned earlier, an extra line is skipped right before the CONNECTED message, for some reason. Why not simply look for that extra line? If you get it, record the address, send the "@" and "D" and increment by 1. lf you don't get the extra line, simply increment by 1. Naturally you will be collecting Telenet addresses for informational purposes only to find out which computers are located where, in case you ever have to get onto one in an emergency of some sort. Keep in mind that you are not entering any of these computers, you're merely connecting for a brief second or two. And there is no login prodcedure or identity check for Telenet, so you're not fraudulently using their system either. Also, the area code system is not the only system that works on Telenet. These are simply set up to be convenient, but an address can actually have any kind of a number in it. For example, addresses beginning with 311 or 909 (the latter being Telenet's own private "area code) also abound, and there are certain to be many more. Without a doubt, though, it's the existence of the area code system that has helped Telenet become one of the easiest data networks to hack. And until they install some sort of a user identification program, or at least have the system disconnect after it becomes obvious that there's a strange person online, hackers will continue to be one of Telenet's biggest problems.