Mastodawn

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

This blog post by @sirocyl from when they broke IKEA has me fricking dying everytime I hear it!

The IKEA automated call service did NOT like the DTMF bomb sent their way 😹

🗃️ https://web.archive.org/web/20230919171037/https://cohost.org/sirocyl/post/2891449-i-broke-ikea

🔊 https://web.archive.org/web/20230919171037im_/https://staging.cohostcdn.org/attachment/3e10ef51-37d7-4f11-bf6a-7df5a637ee81/1_Voicemail_1877xxxxxxx_20210628.mp3

I broke IKEA.

(or, well, one of their delivery services.) 🔊 Just a fair warning - there are some perhaps annoying glitch sounds in the attached recording. The volumes are normalized to limit loud spikes, as they were a lot worse in person. 😅 so, my phone service has a rather clever anti-spam tactic, which works like this: * I receive a phone call from an unknown number, and it goes through screening when I answer it. It rings until the fifth ring, the voicemail greeting plays out, then I've got 30 seconds to judge if it's a spam robocall or if it's genuine * If it's okay, I press 1, and it interrupts the ring/voicemail sequence and I answer the call like usual. * If it's spam, I press ### (the # key by itself normally opens my PBX menu, so it doesn't go through) and hang up immediately. Pressing ### and hanging up, will shove the call to voicemail, then launch a "DTMF bomb", which is a rapid sequence of over a hundred tones of DTMF keysmash, even including some of the "ABCD" keys. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signaling##,_*,_A,_B,_C,_and_D] This has blown up spammers' cheapass PBXes, especially ones with poor security and too much trust given to the DTMF decoder on the call server. So, when IKEA called from a random 1-877 number to confirm my furniture shipment of :sixty: (sixty) blåhaj (about $1200) worth, the only thing it said is "To continue in English, please press 1."... and I had no idea who it was, immediately thought it was spam, and did the ### gesture. Oops. What follows is a transcript of the call in the recording above. ---------------------------------------- > "To continue in English, please press 1️⃣." > [extremely rapid DTMF spam string] > "Your delivery is scheduled for Tuesday. Five. [A burst of digital static plays out here for about a quarter of a second.] $DeliveryDate between the hours of 2pm and 6pm. > > If an adult will not be available within the timeframe provided, or you have any other conflicts, please contact us at > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8 > Message repeat. ⚠️. Your delivery is scheduled for-" [total system breakdown occurs here... followed by dead line noise.] ............. [blerp] ............. [blerp] ............. [blerp] ............. [blerp] (Names, businesses, times, dates and phone numbers may be changed or redacted in order to protect the privacy of those involved.)

sirocyl on cohost

@catsalad @sirocyl Why'd they do this?

@isocat @catsalad Read the post. Imagine you pick up the phone from an unknown number, not expecting a phone call, and all you hear is "To continue in English, please press 1." This was before SHAKEN/STIR, and random spam calls, especially ones to "check for liveness" to mark lines as having real people on them, were proliferating like wildfire at the time.

@sirocyl @catsalad Ah! I missed the post and just got the audio link. Thanks.

@catsalad @sirocyl

That could make a really cool piece of music!

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

If an adult will not be available within the timeframe provided, or you have any other conflicts, please contact us at

8888888888888888

@catsalad @77nn @sirocyl achievement unlocked

@p4 @catsalad @77nn the funniest part is I hadn't even finished the stanley parable by the time this post was out lmao

@77nn @catsalad

I managed to break Google TTS in a similar manner with a very long string of '88888888' on repeat, and had some fun making an ambient phonepunk spooky track out of it.

You should see: https://web.archive.org/web/20250106181512/https://cohost.org/sirocyl/post/5201099-i-broke-google-tts

🔉 https://web.archive.org/web/20250106181512/https://staging.cohostcdn.org/attachment/0bdaeb6b-0e1a-4e9d-ac5b-27d968bd9013/888-1.mp3

I broke Google TTS.

Content notice: Spooky audio, some possibly annoying binaural telephone noises. Mixed for stereo separation. Listen through headphones or a good room-size stereo monitor. Using psychoactive substances while listening is not a good idea whatsoever. I take no responsibility for you having such a bad trip. I uh, put the transcript of the call from "I broke IKEA" into Google TTS, including all the 8's I cut out from that audio (it was 2:24 before editing, just for comparison.) I was fighting with the API sometimes, it would 400 out because my "sentences" were "too long" or "produced too much audio", lol. Got some fun results, so I threw this together. Hope it turned out alright. Thanks to this post for the idea: https://cohost.org/SnepShark/post/5195186-real-i-broke-ikea [https://cohost.org/SnepShark/post/5195186-real-i-broke-ikea] For a transcript, see the original post, "I broke IKEA." [https://cohost.org/sirocyl/post/2891449-i-broke-ikea]

sirocyl on cohost

recursive 🏳️‍🌈Jan 11

@sirocyl I finally listened to this and I really enjoy the "DTMF through algorithmic reverb" kind of sound!

Also the disturbing TTS voice losing its mind is amazing

@77nn @catsalad

Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)Dec 30

@catsalad @sirocyl I thought I was doing well with Deborah Harry's "Hangin' On The Telephone" edited into a continuous loop that never ends… but this is gold.

@catsalad @sirocyl wait... are they using @internetarchive as a hosting provider?

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

@petterroea @sirocyl @internetarchive Cohost is only a ghost now, so yeah 😔

@catsalad ooooh, that explains. What a shame

@petterroea @catsalad @internetarchive I'd never abuse the Archive that way.

I'm probably going to reflect a selection of my Cohost posts on my own website in the near future, though.

@sirocyl @catsalad @internetarchive frankly I thought it was a pretty clever way of keeping an old service alive (and maybe even motivating people to see how things changed over time). Especially since it preserves links. There's some moral problems depending on who is benefiting from it but in general for communities I thought it was pretty clever if you can't pay for hosting any more

@petterroea @catsalad @internetarchive oh I have no qualms with what cohost is doing, that's unquestionably a good thing honestly

I wouldn't use IA as a primary place to store my blog posts though, and I'd like to collect them somewhere within reach

@catsalad
I wonder if the dtmf bomb file is available somewhere to save me from writing a tool to generate it
@sirocyl

@magnetic_tape @catsalad go to Audacity, menu Generate -> DTMF. Set the mark/space ratio to the ITU minimums, and then keysmash numbers into the dialog. Works flawlessly.

@magnetic_tape @catsalad On that note: the dtmf string I used ends in a long string of '8' inputs, which is funny considering what happened on the call.

@sirocyl
Smells like overflow! Do you think it was arbitrary or really the latest numberd in the heap are being overwritten there?
@catsalad

@magnetic_tape @catsalad my theory is that the IVR or PBX they were using, had quit responding, and/or the audio driver or kernel had crashed; and it preassembled voice messages into memory, so it continued to DMA playback the buffer beyond the end, because it couldn't respond to interrupts to stop it.

@sirocyl
Good ol' Audacity! Thanks for the idea
@catsalad

Heathen 🐈Jan 9

@catsalad @sirocyl
Boss, I'm going to need *modem noises* off this week, waiting for a package.