The Red Box
Published: 5/1/2026
The Red Box
The last time we got together over a story we were speaking about the Blue Box, a device that hacked the telephone company circuits and hijacked free long distance telephone calls. That device was developed and used by what was then known as "Phone Phreaks" the precursor to what is a "Hacker" in today's world.
These guys thrived on cheating the telephone company AKA Ma Bell, also known as Public enemy No. 1. Imagine such distain for a company that there were entire groups of people developing ways to rip them off somehow. The Telephone Company called it theft of service and it came in many forms. Fraud was so prevalent that the telephone company had an entire security force dedicated to it, they were known as "The Agents" and whether you lived in New York or Ohio or California the local bell operating company had their own "Agents" assigned to this work.
Sometime in the later part of the 1970's the telephone company discovered that many payphones did not have the proper revenue for the total sum of calls at particular locations. Many of these locations were at colleges and universities. Kids usually figure out the craziest things when they get together it didn’t take long for the telephone company to figure out what was going on.
I bet your saying to yourself, what is this “Red Box” and how big is this thing and how are you going to carry it around without being noticed?
Well the first time the agents set up on a targeted payphone in the 1970's they discovered a guy who had just accessed a coin call fraudulently and when they grabbed him he had what looked like a pack of Big Red gum in his hand. This guy had engineered a device that fit into a pack of big red gum. It emulated the proper tones that registered as a quarter, nickel or dime when you would make a call. The same type of device was later discovered fitted into a box that a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes came in, so the name “Red Box” stuck.
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I'm sure you're wondering how this guy discovered how to make free calls, well after the Captain Crutch whistle hacker type people all over guessed there had to be other ways to make free phone calls as well, and they were right.
If anyone is old enough to remember the old payphones that when you dropped a dime in the slot it made the sound of 2 little dings, that was what the operator would listen for to ensure you were adding the proper amount for a telephone call the new style phones used a frequency tone instead of the actual money hitting a bell..
With the advent of the new style payphone that most of us are familiar with a single slot
You know it no longer made those little ding and gong sounds. A new system was developed for coin telephone use as the traditional operator functions were changing behind the scenes.
The TSPS (Traffic Service Position System) console was replacing the old operator cord boards in 1969 just as the old 3 slot payphones were being replaced with the new 1A single slot coin phone.
All of these changes were based on new 1ESS electronic switching system being installed.
This new system enabled payphone callers to complete their own long distance calls, in order to fully automate the process Bell labs developed an add on system for coin lines called ACTS (Automated Coin Toll System) this worked seamlessly with TSPS and the Coin telephone.
The Cone phone sent multi frequency tones that correlated with each denomination, Quarter, Nickel and Dime. The multi frequency meant that it was a combination of 2 tones put together much like when you dial your phone from a touch tone telephone. Frequency tones ran the telephone network and if your had a hacker mind you tried to exploit them.
For the payphone to make a call and the ACTS system to recognize the coin phone it used multi frequency tones that sounded like small quick beeps.
These were the tones as follows.
A Nickel was (One fast Beep)
1700hz + 2200hz combined that sounded like a small beep at 60 milliseconds long
A Dime was (Two fast Beeps)
1700hz. + 2200hz combined @60 milliseconds then 60 milliseconds silence then the tone again at 60 milliseconds
A quarter was (Five fast Beeps)
1700hz + 2200hz at 33 milliseconds with a 33 millisecond silence between each tone repeated 5 times.
TSPS was smart, it nearly removed the operator from the entire coin use call, it could also collect the money that was held in escrow and return coins for calls not completed. This was all controlled by more frequencies.
The below actions were preceded by 2 quick 33 millisecond burst of a 2600hz Tone
To Collect: 700hz+ 1100hz at 1 second
To Return: 1100hz + 1700hz at 1 second
Ring back: 700hz+1700hz at 2 seconds
ACTS also acted like an operator and made voice announcements such as "Please Deposit 50 cents for the next 3 minutes"
Could all this be the beginning of the end of the telephone operator? Not yet.
The operator could still come on the line if the phone was having issues recognizing the coin deposits and the operator could then verify the correct amount.
As we all know nothing ever stays the same in our business and technology always evolves, TSPS had a good run but by 1982 Bell Labs developed the 5ESS switch, a new more advanced electronic telephone switch. At the same time New York Telephone was trialing the DMS 100 (Digital Multi Switch) by Northern Telecom. There was also a new operator system that was on the horizon.
By 1989 the OSPS (Operator Service Position System) was in place and ACTS was so advanced for its time that it had a seamless integration with the new OSPS. There would still be a need for the human touch and the operator continued on but how much long could the payphone. By the early 1990's cell phones were becoming more popular and COCOTS were popping up all over, Oh what's a COCOT? It's a customer owned coin operated telephone, the telephone company's competition.
This would be the beginning of the end of "red boxing" calls but we still have time to cheat the phone company pay phones, about 20 years, so you can see how this was a problem for the PubComm division of the locals telephone company's. Hackers were on the lose across the country and with the help of their underground secret network an article was written in the 2600 Hacker Quarterly, a newsletter for tech savvy rogue hackers.
It was how to instructions on how to build your own red box device. Word spread quickly in the early 90's that there was a device that could be converted relatively easy into a red bod without the need to build sophisticated circuitry designed to emulate the frequency's needed to make a free payphone call.
Who remembers Radio Shack? It was a great place if you were mechanically inclined to electronics it was a true hacker's candy store. They sold everything you needed to make you own Red Box, however It was kinda ugly and brown it was sold as a tone dialer, something that you could use on your rotary phone to place touch tone calls. This device would need some modification. The instructions help direct you how to alter this device into what you needed to make free calls. The key element was to replace a crystal that emitted tones to a different one than it was manufactured with to one with the frequency of 6.5536MHz. By pressing the * Star key on the dialer it produced the exact frequency the ACTS system was looking for to register the Quarter, Nickel and Dime. One star press was a Nickel Two quick presses was a dime and Five was a Quarter, saving the configuration to a preset button it worked perfectly so for basically $29.95 you could potentially make thousands of dollars in free calls.
This wasn't the only device that could work, for the lesser skilled hackers there was the new Hallmark birthday card that could record your own message on, it also could record the tones from the telephone receiver itself , when you deposited the money you could hear the tones in the receiver of the phone.
You could even use your Sony Walkman record the tones and play them back into the transmitter but it didn’t always work and you might get a live operator on the line and that could be trouble. You could also use a fancy smaller pocket memo recorder like I did and play the tones into the receiver.
With this new found knowledge hackers united and soon Radio Shack was out of stock of the Touch Tone dialers. People across the country were making free public telephone calls but did the telephone company even notice? They sure did with coin phones coming up short on revenue every month. Radio Shack was notified and they attempted to make the dialer tamper resistant and disguised the crystal to prevent it from being replaced but it didn’t work.
There were already laws on the books since the Blue Box fiasco years before when hackers were accessing the long distance network using the Captain Crunch Whistle, Title 18 US Code 1029 was adopted and was related to fraud activity in connection with access devices which makes it a federal crime to make or even possess any device that would defraud the telephone network among other types of networks as well. It's just another form of theft of service, a law on the books in every state. Just the possession of the device is a crime as it isn't much different than having burglar tools with you.
The telephone company eventually got wise to this device and developed a way to mute the receiver until the initial rate was deposited into the phone at which point the transmitter would open for sound but this only went so far in preventing the fraud as eventually you had to add additional money for continuing your call and the transmitter was open susceptible to the red box.
The telephone company was working on this issue for quite some time with agents watching prone locations but by then the use of coin phones had declined so much that it wasn’t necessary and by 2002 most Bell operating companies had discontinued coin service all together as it cost more money to collect coins than were being collected. Verizon however ran public communications until 2012 but most coin phones were steadily being removed for years prior to that. A large portion of their coin phone operations in NYC were sold off To Titan communications in 2009 and the remainder of their phones that was not yet disconnected across their footprint i to Pacific Telemanagment Services in 2011. Verizon exited the payphone business on 1/1/2012 forever.
As we all know today payphones have gone extinct and the network that served them as well.
It took some time for the cell phone to kill the payphone but the cell phone has been acquitted on all charges in the court of public opinion.
Those glorious days of satisfaction making a free phone call and cheating Ma Bell are long gone but will live on in our memories forever. Unfortunately there is a generation who will never have experienced it so it's up to us to keep the stories alive but this is not where the story ends there was still another "Box" that cheated the telephone company but that's a whole other story.
John Stallone Curator/Historian
Verizon New Vision Pioneers
Long Island Telephone Museum
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