Chipping cell phones

[joel2600]

anyone ever heard of this. for some reason i'm just starting to learn about it now.

basically there are modchips for certain types of phones, lets say a phillips c10, which you solder into your phone. these phones are used as prepay phones, and what happens is what the modchip does is copy various addresses which are used by the phone to store the cash remaining balance to an unused area of the eeprom. Then every time you power the phone off/on, the modchip copies the old cash balance back thus giving you all your calltime again.

this stuff worked in england at some point, and may still work. anyone ever here of anyone doing this to other phones, or in the united states?

[green gerbil]

Never heard of cash units being stored in the phone because the approach is so obviously insecure. What chipping usually refers to is changing the phone's firmware so that you can change the ESN from the keypad and clone AMPS/TDMA/CDMA on the fly.

[joel2600]

yeah, i've heard about chipping phones that way too, if anyone has any info on that (schematics, hex code, etc.), i'd be interested.

the chips you are talking about are generally for people who get esn/min pairs to plug into their phone to try and get free service out of it. the chips i'm talking about are placed into phones and sold on the street, to average people who don't even know what an esn is.

here's an article about chipping phones in the UK. and i've also talked to a guy who used to do this when he lived in england.

http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/chipping.htm

i've also got the hex code and diagrams for actually doing this to a philips c10.

what's interesting is that i've got people telling me that people are getting phones made off the street which actually have a chip like this inside them, and they get free calls to anywhere and free everything else. i'm not sure if it's the same sort of chip or not, but that's all i could think of. anyone else know what's going on?

[Kilrah]

So if I understand correctly, it should be a phone with no SIM, and where the account information is not stored by the operator?? seems unbelievable!

[joel2600]

well take a look at this site and tell me what you think

http://www.pipmaster.ic24.net/phone.htm

there is also a zip file to download containing instructions, hex code, etc that i was talking about above.

i know, i kinda find it wierd too that anyone would store any account usage info in the actual phone itself. i don't know anything about these particular phones though.

i wouldn't think that this would be something that you could do to just any phone either. the only thing that still puzzles me is the people telling me about 'chipped' phones in the US and getting free service to anywhere (recieving and sending) presumably without ghosting or cloning. i've heard this is done a lot on nextel phones where people can also two-way each other on these phones.

so far the only thing i can come up with as far as chipping phones is the stuff i've been reading about in the links above. and as far as prepaid nextels, there is a company called boostmobile.com that converts nextels to prepaid phones. my best guess would be that this company or some other company is storing usage info in the phone and people are hacking it somehow. as far as boostmobile goes, their coverage areas don't reach to places like detroit where this is happening.

i'm not sure what to make of it all, or what is really going on. but it's still odd to think that the chipping method above would work anywhere.

any thoughts, anyone?