wardialer

security Almost certainly a shortened version of "WarGames

dialer", from the film WarGames.

1. carrier scanner

2. A program which attempts to break a password of known

length by iterating thru all possible combinations of

characters that could make up that password.

This approach is not feasable for cracking most passwords

these days. However, as late as the mid-1980s, some

long-distance companies required only very short numeric

access codes (e.g. five digits) to verify the identity of

their customers. Wardialers were created which would, running

unattended, call up long-distance providers' local connect

numbers and iteratively try possible access codes. Codes

which worked were logged for later illicit use.

These wardialers had a high success rate because of the small

range of possibilities to iterate through, e.g. 10000 for a

five digit access code, compared to hundreds of trillions of

combinations for an eight-character alphanumeric code.

Long-distance providers soon required longer passwords and

took advantage of technology for rapidly tracing the phone

numbers that wardialers were being run from, such that running

wardialers became pointless and dangerous.

(1997-03-16)