PIN Guessing

The simplest and often most effective technique to hack into someone's voicemail system is to simply guess their PIN. The default PINs assigned to each voicemail box are the best places to start -- due to sloping foreheads and the time constraints of today's busy eating-lifestyles, many users don't reset the default PINs. Simple PINs like 1111, 1234 are also good guesses, as are the last four digits of your target's phone number. If you have access to your target's naked body, check them carefully for any tattoos of four digit numbers.

Example:

Using the phone number for Ms. Ray which I obtained earlier through treachery, I logged into the AT&T voicemail service and attempted to log in to her voicemail box using all the obvious PIN numbers. None of them worked, so I then tried 3866, or EVOO, which is the word Rachel Ray made up to describe olive oil because of this thing with how her brain works. That also didn't work, but it made me feel like I was getting inside her mind a bit, which was a harrowing experience. I had uncovered one of the first dangers of hacking -- getting in too deep.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the term for tricking someone into providing access to a secure system. Computer nerds came up with the term because they imagined it to be like hacking a person's brain, except instead of a person it's a low level customer support person, and instead of a brain, it's a mushy cellular mass which is incapable of giving a fuck.

In the case of hacking into someone's voicemail, this is as simple as calling customer support and asking to reset the PIN of your target's voicemail box. By claiming to be your target, and that you've forgotten her PIN, and the answer to her secret question, and then crying a bit, you get the weary, underpaid CSR to relent and reset the PIN.

Example:

I called AT&T customer support, and after waiting on hold for several weeks, I finally got through to a CSR. I then tried to navigate through the steps necessary to reset her voicemail PIN, an act which required pretending to be Rachel Ray herself ...

"No of course this is my real voice. No one could talk like that all the time."

Just Stand Really Close

If you know where your target likes to speak on the phone, you could simply try standing very close to that spot while they're using their phone, so you can see them enter their PIN.

Keep in mind that if your target is a busy celebrity, who does a lot of walking and talking, you'll have to consider a way to surreptitiously keep pace with them.

So I was trying this last week, by rollerblading directly behind Rachel Ray for about three hours. She never did actually check her voicemail in that time, although I did overhear an awful lot of her phone conversations. As will you, if the recordings of her increasingly frantic 911 calls about my manic roller-stalking are ever released to the courts.

Swordfish It

There's always the possibility of doing "real" computer hacking on the voicemail system. To do this, you'll need a mainframe, and a GUI, and a BIOS and eight keyboards, and a T1 line and some other things. Get all those things, put them in a heap in the middle of your living room, and then call the Geek Squad, who should be able to help you with the rest.

Example:

Fuck Best Buy. That's all I have to say about that. That's all anyone ever needs to say about anything.

That tree there was still alive until this Best Buy was built.

Dummy Phone

By replacing your target's phone with a duplicate, you can record them entering their PIN and then divert them to a dummy mailbox which doesn't contain any voicemails of you promising to make them happy. To do this, you'll need excellent sleight-of-hand skills as well as an exact copy of your target's phone (many phone manufacturers make large quantities of nearly identical phones these days).

Example:

This didn't work well at all. Because of her job and all the candies she has on her person at all times, Rachel Ray's hands are incredibly sticky, as is everything she owns. After removing my roller blades, waiting several weeks, I disguised myself as a trustworthy member of society ...

"That's right, I am a doctor. Doctor ...... Pepper. ....... Dammit Bucholz.

... and then followed Ms. Ray at a distance for several hours. Unfortunately, the entire time her phone was stuck to her neck, and my up-close magic skills simply weren't proficient enough, nor the solvents I routinely carry powerful enough to separate the phone from her.

With an Axe

A simple steel-headed fire axe is capable of hacking into many things, like the side door of the AT&T data center off 4th and Elm, as well as the objections of the wan folk who dwell within, and even the case of the servers which house the hard drive containing your target's voicemail messages. This is hacking in its most prototypical sense, and will make you feel like a bigger person, and also a bit, ironically enough, like a dwarf.

"Dwarf dwarf dwarf dwarf. Dwarf dwarf dwarf. Axe!"

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Things went really according to plan here, almost suspiciously so. It turned out that that's pretty ordinary, because a man with an axe and a plan is a hell of a force in today's society where so few wear armor. But the plan kind of petered out after the hard drives were sundered, and while deciding what to do next, the police showed up, angry. Conventional police tactics tend to overwhelm a man with an axe in a frontal attack, so I made a brave retreat. But, after a series of successful hacks through bushes, a chain link fence and a Wal-Mart, I was apprehended. Fortunately for me, they didn't find the second, auxiliary axe taped to my inner thigh, and while they were busy dealing with the small riot that had broken out in the aftermath of my hacking, I was able to hack my way out of my cuffs and the police car.

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Be sure to tune in to Bucholz's column next week: How to Hack Your Way Across Three States, a Mexican Border Town, and Into a Whole New Life. (Alternate Title: Identity Theft: How to Hack Your Way to a New Face)

And check out more from Bucholz in Justin Bieber's Favorite Knife Fighting Techniques and An Interview With James Cameron's Avatar About 'Avatar'.