war dialingnoun.
A computer cracking technique that uses a software program to automatically call thousands of telephone numbers to look for any that have a modem attached.
Example Citation:
"WheelGroup will now try to gain access by avoiding the Internet and attacking XYZ's individual computers. It will use a method called war-dialing. Consulting the phone number on the business card of an XYZ employee, the hackers assume (correctly) that computer modems at the company will use the same area code and three-digit prefix. Waddell downloads a free program from the Internet called ToneLoc, written by hackers named Minor Threat and Mucho Maas. It comes with a manual that explains how to automatically call thousands of phone numbers within a specific range."
—"How We Invaded a Fortune 500 Company," Fortune, February 3, 1997
Notes:
This term comes from the 1983 movie War Games, now a classic in computer cracking circles. In the movie a young cracker (Matthew Broderick) is using war dialing to look for games and bulletin board systems. However, he inadvertently ends up with a direct connection to a high-level military computer that gives him control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Chaos ensues.
