The Oracle of Queens - How I hacked the cellular phone traffic of all big gangsters and criminal federal agents for years in NYC
So one of the most important hacking devices ever conceived was the Oki 900 "Test Mode." The Oki 900 was a popular cell phone in the 1990s, and no one even knew that it had a secret "Test Mode" embedded in it which allowed you to do many unbelievable things. When we used to hack the Motorola phones to import a different ESN into the chips, we were using a program called the "Motorola v4.3 Programmer," and all it allowed us to do was change the ESN to steal cell service of other people (to make and receive calls on their accounts for free). This hack essentially put a cell phone in the hands of everyone for between $80-$100 a month of unlimited local/long distance calling (at a time when it was like dollars per minute for cell service). On one phone, our people could run up a $20,000 bill in just a month and only pay $100. And it was very cumbersome to program the phones, you needed a computer, all kinds of special cables and interfaces and other tedious nonsense.
But there was no technology that even came close to allowing you to actually tap cellphone traffic to spy on people's conversations. Even for federal agents to tap a cell phone, it was arduous process you had to do it working with the cell company, asking to access their switches directly (and get warrants for pen registers, etc). And then I ran into some secret hacking instructions related to the the Oki 900 Cell Phone in a hacker BBS I was active member. It was a manual on how to access the "Test Mode" embedded into that specific phone. I downloaded it and could not believe what I was reading. I immediately ran to Radio Shack and bought the phone (it was like $800 brand new back then). You can see the manual for "Test Mode" here:
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/underground/telephony/cellular/oki900guide.htm
And this is how you access the debuger functions of Test Mode. Power the phone up. Wait for Power On msg. Hit 7 and 9 together. Then hit Menu, Snd, End, Rcl, Sto, Clr. Phone says good timing! TestMode is now enabled, but phone works normally. Hit 1 and 3 together to halt phone and enter debugger. Everything on display lights up. Hit Clr, till you get status display.
And that was all she wrote. From there you can scan the local Cell Band Analogue Frequency and literally turn the phone into a spy device and listen to all cell phone calls in the area, clear as if you were on the line speaking with them. You could even directly program the ESN directly from debugger mode without any equipment. At that instant, I became the most advanced hacker in New York City. I was listening to the entire neighborhoods cell phone traffic, anywhere I went. I knew what everyone was doing, how much drugs anyone was selling, which girl was cheating on who, everything. And having all the information, made you the most powerful person out of everyone.
When the DEA started refusing my demands to speak to them about the murders I was witnessing, I even started to tap the cellphones of the DEA Agents at their headquarters at 99 Tenth Ave in Manhattan. The feds had to jump through 10 hoops just to tap our cell phones, and I only had to drive down to the diner down the block from their headquarters, turn on the Oki and listen to their little deepest darkest secrets. I would find out when DEA was onto my friends almost immediately when it happened, and I would warn the people I was close too. DEA couldn't figure it out for years, they would be onto someone and then all the taps would go cold, beepers disconnected, stash houses shut down before they could run up in them like superstars of their favorite cop movie that they always wanted to be in. Oh well, better luck next time.
When I showed this to some of my close friends that were bigtime mafia, I was getting offers of up to $250,000 to sell them the phone. I had lied to them and told them that I had to get a special chip in it for the hack, so they didn't know that any Oki could do it, and all they needed was the secret password to get in. I could have just sold them the phone and given the instructions, and then bought myself another one to use (and go buy a Ferrari to spin around town with). But information is power, so I wanted to remain the only person in all of New York City that had the ability to tap the cell phones of anyone I wanted, even the feds.
So I did not want to share my super power with anyone, and stayed at the top of the mafia and fed ecosystem at all times. Even when the DEA arrested me in 1996, they had to lie and break every law to file a false case trying to coverup the embarrassing way I had easily defeated their fake toy cop operation and busted them too.
Everyone wanted to hire me to do cell phone tapping for them, I could have made millions doing just that alone, but I never did it for money. Sometimes I saved lives with it, and I did not trust anyone else in all of New York to have this much power. Had to keep it for myself.