I guess I've just been reading a lot of older stuff, then. I'm going through the Hacker's Handbook and a bunch of old Phrack articles.
@recon id suggest grabing the 2600 archive i uploaded as well. ill update it someday with the past few years its missing(i know im a bad person for not having done it yet) but 2600 started primarily as a phreaking publication. between old phrack/2600 you should be able to learn a good bit about it.
@proxx yeah i wasnt saying it isnt still done, just that my knowledge of "new" techniques is abysmal. more or less i was saying its not like the 90s or even early 2k where you only had a couple of switches and the like to learn about to be able to own any system.
Anyway recon my post was not meant to discourage you from reading up on the old stuff, just that some of it might not be able to be applied as is now. That being said its well worth reading up on! current voip systems still have a LOT of "legacy" functionality built in that can be a great place to start an attack. Even aside from that the place(s) your learning from should help you understand the ideas/methodology behind the hack which is infinitely rewarding. At the end of the day hacking isnt about "i won this place" or "here is a step by step tut on x y or z" its about: i ran into this problem,bug,issue, etc and wondered what happened if i did "this" to it. "this" didnt do anything for me, so i tried "that". "that" didnt work, but caused "something" else to happen. so i poked "something" until it did what i wanted it too. Many of the articles in phrack or 2600 give you that kind of insight. not just what the bug or hole is, but what they were doing when they found it/how they found it, and how they exploited it to achieve a desired result. That is just pure gold. So do continue reading back issues and old material. Even if you will never get to make a free call on a payphone. the methodology is very important.
