This forum is focused on discussing Digital and Voice paging equipment, protocol's, infrastructure, and Motorola specific hardware used. Please refrain from discussing different ways to monitor the digital paging systems due to the legalities of such.
Sometimes I see cheap pagers on eBay that I wanna buy, but the sellers almost never know if they're passworded, so I don't buy 'em.
But then I'll see lots of other buyers just bidding away. If a pager is passworded and you don't know the password, isn't it useless? Am I wrong on this?
How is it that these buyers are getting around the password issue? Why would so many bidders buy pagers they don't even know they can program?
Probably the same people who buy the 403-433 mHz
Sabers, not knowing they're virtually useless to most of us.
I see people bidding on radios whose data is nearly or
actually non-existent too, and I wonder about it the same
way you do.
Tom in D.C. In 1920, the U.S. Post Office Department ruled
that children may not be sent by parcel post.
sunnybor wrote:Well... I and my friend are those bidding buyer... Because we wasted our money for fleabay, so we decided to find out how to fix our pagers by ourself and pay only one time for the equipement...
So you got stuck with eBay pagers that had passwords and therefore couldn't use 'em? Or have you found a way to break the passwords?
If you ever figure it out and have the time, it would be great to post an explnation. I think it would be nice to have a sticky thread about breaking passwords.
I agree. There are hardware password breaking boxes and some parallel-port-plus-software password breakers but they seem so simple...
I bet that hooking them up to a logic analyzer would reveal that they just send some simple reset command.
Has anyone tried this to see if there's a challenge/response or just a simple one-way command?
I know some password crackers tell you the password so of course those must 'talk back' to the cracker.
PS I have a few password breakers, mostly for older pagers. Maybe in the sticky post could be a listing of a service where people break passwords? I.E. Listing the person's name and what pagers they can crack. I'd do it for free in exchange for some info or software, or for future credit on a pager I needed cracked (for a model I can't do myself)
EEnerd wrote:I agree. There are hardware password breaking boxes and some parallel-port-plus-software password breakers but they seem so simple...
I bet that hooking them up to a logic analyzer would reveal that they just send some simple reset command.
Has anyone tried this to see if there's a challenge/response or just a simple one-way command?
I know some password crackers tell you the password so of course those must 'talk back' to the cracker.
PS I have a few password breakers, mostly for older pagers. Maybe in the sticky post could be a listing of a service where people break passwords? I.E. Listing the person's name and what pagers they can crack. I'd do it for free in exchange for some info or software, or for future credit on a pager I needed cracked (for a model I can't do myself)
I found this link sometime ago and it works great. It seems complicated at first, after you get it figured out once you'll be so happy. It does have some limitations but it’s better to look at 10 Pagers that are Bricks instead of 100. http://groups.google.com/group/tnn.comm ... baff0e592b
I found this link sometime ago and it works great. It seems complicated at first, but after you get it figured out once you'll be so happy. It does have some limitations but it’s better to look at 10 Pagers that are Bricks instead of 100.
That is very interesting; but there appear to be several different passwords; and if you don't have the one that lets you read the pager, then you can't get the S19 file that you can decode the other passwords from. Isn't that read password the one most often encountered? I may be missing something here.
EEnerd wrote:PS I have a few password breakers, mostly for older pagers. Maybe in the sticky post could be a listing of a service where people break passwords? I.E. Listing the person's name and what pagers they can crack. I'd do it for free in exchange for some info or software, or for future credit on a pager I needed cracked (for a model I can't do myself)
That's not what I meant!!
Although, maybe you won't like this idea either.
But what I was saying is, I picked up a few pager password crackers. These are hardware boxes that display (or clear) the programming passwords on a few different types of pagers. I was offering the service of pulling or clearing the passwords for those pagers that I have the boxes to do. I was kind of assuming other users had other boxes for various pager models. I was proposing a list of users showing each type pf pager they could crack. So if someone had an Advisor Gold with a password, for example, they could send it to user X who has the password cracker for the Advisor Golds.
I would imagine Alex's concern is that such password crackers could be used for illegitimate uses as well as legitimate ones. Given Motorola's policy on such things it's probably best that it stays off of batlabs.
Hmm
I see your point and don't want to belabor the issue but I dont know that Motorola has anything to say about it, the courts have upheld that if you buy a piece of hardware and run out your contract, you own it and can do whatever the heck you want with/to it. I believe this remains true even under the ECPA.
Now if the pager is leased or rented that's another matter, but those users wouldn't be sending their pagers to some guy on a web forum, would they?
That's all fine and dandy but the admins here (whose a$$ is on the line if /\/\ drops the hammer) don't have a way of knowing or controlling legitimate uses of the product. I can certainly understand the powers that be erring on the side of caution when it comes to /\/\'s copyrights and intellectual property.
Ok, the point is that I said your not using this forum as an avenue to crack passwords on pagers, for whatever reason.
Which means NO... and No, means just that.
There are infrastructure as well as other proprietary information contained within those pagers. Providers have enough issues with the news codes being out there and people programming up their pagers to get the information.... There's no need to propogate the problem through this forum.
I've had more than enough personal success taking the pager to one of the service centers, and they have wiped it, with no questions asked.
This was back when PageNET was around. They even sold us old advisors for $10 a pop wiped.
All you have to do is ask. No hacking, no password cracking.
Sorry Alex, I'm going to have to side with TPG here. On this thread you say that there will be no password cracking happening, but meanwhile you allow a thread to continue with very clear instructions of how to circumvent the password protection on CPS. It's your board to run however you wish, but please, stick to one policy!
I think you are missing the point about the difference between cracking a CPS password to service a radio and cracking a pager password and obtaining capcodes for the specific purpose of theft of service from a paging system.
As Alex said, if you are a legitimate user, you can usually take the pager to the paging service provider and they will program it.
So it's okay for Buddy #1 to steal a CDM1550 from a taxi and come here to find out how to crack the password, but buddy #2 who bought a pager from ebay isn't?
What my point is - there are legitimate reasons as to why someone would want to crack a password. There are also illegitimate reasons. You never can tell who is in it for the right reason. Sure, I might have bought a pager off of ebay because I want to steal sports scores, or I might have bought one because I want to experiment on the amateur bands, or maybe my pager broke.
So in order to at least appear fair, if someone is going to be told they can't post info on how to crack passwords, it should apply evenly, regardless.
k2hz wrote:I think you are missing the point about the difference between cracking a CPS password to service a radio and cracking a pager password and obtaining capcodes for the specific purpose of theft of service from a paging system.
As Alex said, if you are a legitimate user, you can usually take the pager to the paging service provider and they will program it.
Watch this:
I think you are missing the point about the difference between cracking a pager password to service a pager and cracking a CPS Password and obtaining LTR and User Codes for the specific purpose of theft of service from a trunking system.
As Alex said, if you are a legitimate user, you can usually take the radio to the trunking system service provider and they will program it.
How's that for you K2HZ? There is NO DIFFERENCE. Only intent.
You guys have a very good point - There is no difference, and TPG is right - only intent on what you need to do with it.
Thanks for pointing this out -
My main concern is I don't want to see lists of passwords for this provider or that provider here. Google seems to have that covered.
My concern: There is a big difference between knowing how to do something, and actually doing it.
So in the end, I'll revise my statement (and since the presedence has been set by another admin, and probably myself at one point or another) to say that if you want to post how to get around it - fine, whatever. All this is going to do is make manufactures and consumers more knoledgeable about security of their information and infrastructure. No difference than someone posting a security bug to get it fixed.
However, I don't want to see passwords posted here - I think that would probably be pushing it.
Seem reasonable?
Sorry for the confusion, and as stated - your right - but hopefully that's more clear.
Alex, very reasonable. Personally, I see nothing wrong with posting information on how to hack/crack a password. If Motorola doesn't like the fact that people are doing this, they need to take a look at how they store/process passwords and make them harder to crack.
I absolutely agree that posting lists of known passwords on here is probably not a very good idea. Some people could easily argue that you're condoning pager/radio service theft, but by leaving it up to the end user to crack it themselves, you aren't condoning that. It's all up to what the end user intends to do with it.
Maybe you guys deal with newer pagers than I do, but the password on the pagers I've dealt with only prevents you from reprogramming it, nothing else. If you want to get the capcode stored within I think there are ways to do it right from the pager itself with no hacking involved (like with the Bravos where you just press arrow and lock to go into testmode and view the capcode).
My point is there's really not much bad you could do by cracking a pager password- I see it as the same as unlocking a GSM phone that's passworded to only take SIM cards from one service provider (assuming your contract with them is complete).
If a pager is passworded and you don't know the password, isn't it useless? Am I wrong on this?
Because we wasted our money for fleabay, so we decided to find out how to fix our pagers by ourself and pay only one time for the equipement...
