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36-523: John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch , Crunch , or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak . He is a widely known figure within the computer programming world and the hacker and security community, and generally lives a nomadic lifestyle. Draper is the son of a United States Air Force engineer. As

72-564: A claymation ad during the 1980s. Jean LaFoote is a fictional pirate character from the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal's character set. The character's name is wordplay on that of the historical pirate, Jean Lafitte . In the mid-1970s, he was the primary mascot for Jean LaFoote's Cinnamon Crunch cereal. LaFoote was originally voiced by Bill Scott , followed by Adam Shapiro from 2006 to 2007, and Joe Nipote in The Cap'n Crunch Show in 2013. In

108-501: A pirate radio station in nearby Dover-Foxcroft , but shut it down after a legally-licensed radio station, WDME , objected. Draper was honorably discharged from the Air Force as an Airman First Class in 1968. He moved to Silicon Valley and briefly worked for National Semiconductor as an engineering technician and at Hugle International, where he worked on early designs for a cordless telephone . He also attended De Anza College on

144-417: A trunk line was available for routing a new call. The tone disconnected one end of the trunk while the still-connected side entered operator mode. The vulnerability they had exploited was limited to call-routing switches that relied on in-band signaling . After 1980 and the introduction of Signalling System No. 7 most U.S. phone lines relied almost exclusively on out-of-band signaling . This change rendered

180-563: A "C" and a gold-epauletted blue coat with gold bars on the sleeves. While typically an American naval captain wears four bars on his sleeves, the mascot has been variously depicted over the years wearing only one bar ( ensign ), two bars ( lieutenant ), or three bars ( commander ). As of May 26, 2024, he is now depicted on cereal boxes with the four bars of a naval captain. Voice actor Daws Butler created Cap'n Crunch's voice, basing it on that of Hollywood and radio character actor Charles Butterworth . Animated television commercials featured

216-577: A child, he built a home radio station from discarded military components. He was frequently bullied in school and briefly received psychological treatment. After taking college courses, Draper enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1964. While stationed in Alaska , he helped his fellow service members make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard . In 1967, while stationed at Charleston Air Force Station in Maine, he created WKOS (W-"chaos"),

252-419: A meeting that led Draper into the world of "phone phreaks", people who study and experiment with telephone networks, and who sometimes use that knowledge to make free calls. Teresi and several other phone phreaks were blind. Learning of Draper's knowledge of electronic design, they asked him to build a multifrequency tone generator, known informally as a blue box , a device for emitting audio tones used to control

288-556: A pair of eyes peeking out from an opening in the head, implying it was a suit of armor for a smaller figure) who was mostly seen ordering the Soggies to carry out his plans to "ruin breakfast"; several commercials that tied in with contests had story arcs involving the Sogmaster attempting to capture Cap'n Crunch. Toll fraud Phone fraud , or more generally communications fraud , is the use of telecommunications products or services with

324-514: A part-time basis through 1972. During this period, he also worked as an engineer and disc jockey for KKUP in Cupertino, California and adopted the countercultural styles of the time by wearing long hair and smoking marijuana . While testing a pirate radio transmitter he had built, Draper broadcast a telephone number to listeners seeking feedback to gauge the station's reception. A call from fellow pirate radio operator Denny Teresi resulted in

360-520: A role offered to him directly by co-founder John Walker . In 1987, Draper was charged in a scheme to forge tickets for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. He pled guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges in 1988 and entered a diversion program. While facing prosecution, he remained on the Autodesk payroll but did not work for the company until he was fired the following year. From 1999 to 2004, Draper

396-546: A ship called the Guppy , and was born on Crunch Island, a magical island in the Sea of Milk—with talking trees, crazy creatures and a mountain (Mt. Crunchmore) made out of Cap'n Crunch cereal." The article refers to the Captain's bicorne as a " Napoleon -style" hat, and claims that this has led to speculation that he may be French . Cap'n Crunch's original animated television commercials used

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432-443: Is only to explore a system. Computers, systems—that's my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer. The notoriety of the article led to Draper's arrest in 1972 on charges of toll fraud , and a criminal sentence of five years' probation. However, it also caught the attention of University of California, Berkeley engineering student and future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak , who located Draper while working as an engineer at

468-439: Is unclear when Draper's involvement in the company ceased; however, filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission document the resignations of several of its officers, including Wozniak, during the summer of 2009. En2Go never achieved commercial success. In 2017, organizers of at least four hacking and security-related conferences (including DEF CON , HOPE , and ToorCon ) said they had banned Draper from attending in

504-507: The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) was investigating him for impersonating a naval officer. Daws Butler provided the original voice of the Cap'n until his death in 1988. From 1991 to 2007, George J. Adams voiced him, followed by John Gegenhuber in The Cap'n Crunch Show in 2013, and Mike Stoudt from 2021 to 2023. In the 1960s Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes came with whistles which coincidentally had

540-454: The "Charlie Board," which was designed to dial toll-free telephone numbers used by many corporations and to emit touch-tones that would grant access to the WATS lines in use by those companies. In theory, this would allow unlimited and free long-distance phone calls. "It was an incredible board. But no one at Apple liked Crunch. Only me. They wouldn't let his device become a product," Wozniak said of

576-469: The 1980s, the Captain's main adversaries were the Soggies , strange alien creatures resembling blobs of milk, whose goal was to make everything on Earth soggy. The only thing that was immune was Cap'n Crunch cereal, and many ads revolved around their attempts to "soggify" the cereal and everything else, to no avail. Their leader, Squish the Sogmaster (voiced by Dick Gautier ), was a large mechanical creature (with

612-422: The adventures of Cap'n Crunch commanding the "good ship" Guppy on its sea voyages accompanied by his canine first mate Seadog and loyal crew of sailor children named Alfie, Dave, Brunhilde, and Carlyle. Jean LaFoote, "The Barefoot Pirate", often attacked the Guppy in order to steal its cargo of Cap'n Crunch cereal. According to The Wall Street Journal (2013), the character, Horatio Magellan Crunch, captains

648-416: The counterculture. When first contacted by Rosenbaum about the story, Draper was ambivalent about being interviewed, but also, in the same breath, explained his prevailing ethos: I don't do that. I don't do that anymore at all. And if I do it, I do it for one reason and one reason only. I'm learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it

684-401: The development team of Cap'n Crunch. Reinhart developed a technique in the manufacture of Cap'n Crunch, using oil in its recipe as a flavor delivery mechanism—which initially made the cereal difficult to bake properly. Quaker Oats had a marketing plan for Cap'n Crunch, before it had developed the cereal. The product line is heralded by a cartoon mascot named Cap'n Crunch. The character

720-401: The encounters as an "energy workout" employing techniques of applied kinesiology , a discredited form of alternative medicine of which he claims to be an advocate. Draper conceded that in some instances he may have experienced an erection during the encounters, which allegedly included massages of the leg and arm muscles as well as squats and pushups while carrying Draper's bodyweight. Draper

756-500: The episode. Some of its techniques would later be used in tone-activated calling menus, voicemail , and other services. In 1976 and 1978, Draper served two prison sentences for phone fraud. While on a work-release program during a third period of incarceration in 1979, Draper wrote EasyWriter , the first word processor for the Apple II. Draper later ported EasyWriter to the IBM PC , and it

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792-556: The flavor coating for Cap'n Crunch, describing it as giving the cereal a quality she called "want-more-ishness". After her death in 2007, The Boston Globe called Low "the mother of Cap'n Crunch". At Arthur D. Little, Low had also worked on the flavors for Heath , Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars. In 1965, the Quaker Oats Company awarded the Fredus N. Peters Award to Robert Rountree Reinhart Sr. for his leadership in directing

828-461: The hacking community. Draper is also mentioned throughout the poem "Phone Phreaking" by Neil Hilborn , in his collection 'Our Numbered Days'. Cap%27n Crunch The original Cap'n Crunch cereal was developed to recall a recipe of brown sugar and butter over rice. It was one of the first cereals to use an oil coating to deliver its flavoring, which required an innovative baking process. Grandma would like to make this concoction with rice and

864-410: The intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers. Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce their losses. Communications operators tend to keep their actual loss figures and plans for corrective measures confidential. According to a 2011 survey by CFCA, an industry group created to reduce fraud against carriers,

900-453: The phone network. The group had previously used an organ and cassette recordings of tones to make free calls. Among the phone phreaks, one blind boy who had taken the moniker of Joybubbles had perfect pitch and was able to identify frequencies precisely. Draper learned that a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal emitted a tone at precisely 2600 hertz —the same frequency that AT&T long lines used to indicate that

936-592: The radio station KKUP. Wozniak and Draper met to compare techniques for building blue boxes. Also present was Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs . Wozniak and Jobs later set up a small business selling blue boxes. In 1977, Draper worked for Apple as an independent contractor , and was assigned by Wozniak to develop a device that could connect the Apple II computer to phone lines. Wozniak said he thought computers could act like an answering machine , and modems were not yet widely available. Draper designed an interface device dubbed

972-533: The sauce that she had; it was a combination of brown sugar and butter. It tasted good, obviously. They'd put it over the rice and eat it as a kind of a treat on Sundays ... —William Low, Pamela Low's brother Pamela Low , a flavorist at Arthur D. Little , developed the original Cap'n Crunch flavor in 1963—recalling a recipe of a mixture of brown sugar and butter her grandmother Luella Low served over rice at her home in Derry , New Hampshire . Low created

1008-410: The slogan, "It's got corn for crunch, oats for punch, and it stays crunchy, even in milk." In 2013, sources including The Wall Street Journal and Washington Times noted that the three stripes on the mascot's uniform indicate a rank of Commander rather than the four that denote the rank of Captain. In jest, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Navy had no record of Crunch and that

1044-473: The specific frequency ( 2600 hertz ) required to exploit a vulnerability of in-band signaling enabling a phone to make free calls by entering an 'operator mode'. This was discovered by John Draper . Author Philip Wylie wrote a series of short stories, Crunch and Des , beginning in the 1940s, which featured a similarly named but otherwise unrelated character, Captain Crunch Adams. Vinton Studios produced

1080-427: The toy whistles and blue boxes useless for phreaking purposes. The whistles are considered collectible souvenirs of a bygone era, and the magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is named after the audio frequency. In 1971, journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrote about phone phreaking for Esquire . The article relied heavily on interviews with Draper and conferred upon him a sort of celebrity status among people interested in

1116-400: The wake of allegations against him concerning unwanted sexual attention toward other attendees. The allegations were reported in two stories by BuzzFeed News . Further allegations against Draper emerged in reporting by The Parallax. In the story, University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze asserted that Draper subjected him to a stalking campaign in the 1970s when he

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1152-501: Was a teenager and when Draper would have been in his thirties. Additionally, journalist Phil Lapsley alleged that Draper consented to an interview in exchange for a partially clothed piggyback ride. Following reports of the allegations, Draper said that he has Asperger syndrome , which he said could have contributed to his behavior. He denied some of the allegations in an interview with The Daily Dot and did not answer others. He denied any explicit sexual intent and instead described

1188-408: Was created by Allan Burns , who became known for co-creating The Munsters and The Mary Tyler Moore Show . The commercials themselves were originally produced by Jay Ward Productions . Cap'n Crunch is depicted as a late 18th-century naval captain , an elderly gentleman with white eyebrows and a white moustache, who wears a Revolutionary -style naval uniform : a bicorne hat emblazoned with

1224-622: Was one of the key figures in the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. The book chronicles the rise of the hacker subculture in the 1970s and 80s. In scenes depicting his interactions with Wozniak and Jobs, Draper was portrayed by the actor Wayne Péré in the 1999 made-for-TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley . The 2001 documentary film The Secret History of Hacking , features interviews with Draper, Steve Wozniak , Kevin Mitnick , and other notable figures in

1260-477: Was selected by IBM as the machine's official word processor , beating competing bids from Microsoft . Draper formed a software company called Capn' Software, but it booked less than $ 1 million in revenue over six years. Distributor Bill Baker also hired other programmers to create a follow-up program, Easywriter II, without Draper's knowledge. Draper sued and the case was later settled out-of-court. Draper joined Autodesk in 1986, designing video driver software in

1296-516: Was the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for ShopIP, a computer security firm that designed The Crunchbox GE, a firewall device running OpenBSD . Despite endorsements from Wozniak, and publicity from media profiles, the product failed to achieve commercial success. In 2007, Draper was named Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at En2go, a software company that developed media delivery tools. The company had previously been named Medusa Style Corp. It

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