Actually, the software to do this kind of thing was actually what Mitnick was after! It would be laughably easy by today’s standards. Cloning AMPs phones (with

Actually, the software to do this kind of thing was actually what Mitnick was after! It would be laughably easy by today’s standards. Cloning AMPs phones (with ESN/MIN from “trashing” and bootleg Motorola service software) was within the reach of bored teenagers, but the elusive “vampire phone” required decoding the control channel. This was “hard” at the time. It could be done with the right service equipment or say, suitably hacked firmware for something like an OKI 900... No stingray required, you could indeed do everything passively. Very different times. Today you could probably do it all by dragging a few blocks around in gnu radio’s grc tool.