T-CARD, GERMAN TELEKOM'S CALLING CARD
by GemFire/THC
I think, it was a year ago, when I first heard about a new calling card,
this time by German Telekom. The history of calling card fraud is very long,
because AT&T, MCi, Sprint and other phone companies made it possible for many
hackers and phreakers all over the world to make free phone calls very easy.
Now German Telekom offers the same service?! I think many guys tried to hack
those new cards, but I've never heard of a big success. There are several
different types of T-Cards, one is called T-CARD25 which is a pre-paid card
with an amount of 25 DM (18 $) - the other one is a charge card.
The cardholder will get a bill every month. On this bill all called phone
numbers are listed, but with XXX instead of the last three digits.
There are three possibilities to pay for your card: Together with your normal
phone bill, with a credit card or you give the permission, that Telekom will
take it from your bank account. In my new school, we must work in a local
company for a few weeks, to get the feeling of the real live. I looked up the
list and found out, that I must work for German Telekom. With an evil grin
I went home... There were a lot of things to do at Telekom, one fine thing
was, that I was able to make free calls, without having problems. There's
a big room there filled with ISDN phones from where you can make private calls.
One day, I called the Telekom Business Service and asked some questions.
The operator there noticed my Telekom internal Caller ID and she started
talking with me about many things. I got the answers to some difficult
questions, and she gave me an internal number for detailed technical
informations. "Don't give out this number to customers!" she warned me and
again I left the room with an evil grin on my face. One other day, an old
guy asked if there's is somebody who knows about T-Cards. He quickly noticed
that I'm more intelligent than the average Telko pig and an hour later I found
myself in a small room with a phone and a list full of Telekom internal calling
card numbers. I became an official T-Card System Tester. We tried a lot of
things and in one test, Telekom wanted to find out how many callers can call
the computer at the same time, before it will shut down. I made calls to the
whole world, and more and more testers all over the country invaded the system.
The automated voice talked slower, simple options took over one minute to
complete. Again, I made some calls and checked the account information.
I noticed that the last calls weren't billed. Interesting...
The internal cards were interesting, too. They acted like charge cards, but
they had a 50 DM (36 $) limit per month. The card computer itself is very
intelligent, it is able to learn the habits of a customer, e.g. which countries
he calls normally and how long he's talking. A further security measure is,
that after three wrong pin entries, the card will be locked for further calls
until the owner of the card calls the operator. Every customer can choose
a password/passphrase for such actions, because the operator must be sure
that the caller is really the cardholder. Sometimes they even make a callback
verification. You can use T-Cards in over 50 countries. I just tell you the
numbers of the most important countries.
Germany 0130-0222
Australia (Telstra) 1800-881-490
Australia (Optus) 008-5511-49
France 19-(wait for second dialtone)-0049
Great Britain (BT) 0-800-89-0049
Great Britain (Mercury) 0-500-89-0049
Hawaii 1-800-865-0049
Hongkong 800-0049
Irland 1-800-55-0049
Israel 177-490-2727
Italia 172-0049
Japan (KDD) 0039-491
Japan (IDC) 0066-55-449
Canada 1-800-465-0049
Netherlands 06-022-0049
Austria 022-903-049
Sweden 020-799-049
Spain 900-99-0049
South Africa 0800-99-0049
USA (AT&T) 1-800-292-0049
USA (MCi) 1-800-766-0049
USA (US-Sprint) 1-800-927-0049
How to use a hacked card?
1. Dial the access number
2. Press 1 for T-Card Service (if you're not calling from Germany)
3. Choose language: Press 1 for German, 2 for English and 3 for French
4. Enter Cardnumber and PIN then press #
5. Enter the number you wish to call dial 00+country code+number and press #
Instead of dialing a number you can access a submenu with *1#
Listen to the voice what you can do there.
Charge cards have the following format 8XXX XXXX XXXX + PIN (4 digits)
Pre-paid card have no PIN number, which makes them easy to hack, as if you
know a valid pre-paid card number you can easily guess new numbers.
They're not in sequence, but if 8214 1234 1234 is a valid card you can guess
some valid cards easy. But 18 $ is not very much, so concentrate hacking
the real ones. They came in two envelopes and the second letter arrives
about one or two days later. One letter contains the card, and the other the
PIN number. This should make stealing difficult, but wait... My card arrived
in July 95 and the temporary pin was 9507. Got the point?
I know it's difficult to hack one of these card, but if you have one, you'll
have much phun. I'm abusing one of the test cards for 6 month now. Customer
cards will often work a whole month. I think that's worth it.
Have phun!
GemFire/THC