war dial 

To call someone an excessive number of times. This can also be used to describe text messages and instant messages

Jesus, she's called me 14 times already today. She won't stop war dialing me

war dial by Trommler March 8, 2008

war dial 

When you war dial,at least back in the days of BBSes, you are scanning every phone number in a range (eg 555-555-xxxx) to find BBSes,fax machines,carriers, company dial-in computers, and more!

Person 1: Hey, do you want to war dial?

Person 2: Sure, I need some hacking BBSes!

war dial by Go_Hacking! May 20, 2009

war dialing

War dialing is scanning a range of telephones (ex. 555-555-xxxx) to find all sorts of stuff, like fax machines, carriers, and BBSes (remember this was a loooong time ago)!

Joe: Hey, I was war dialing our area code and found a hacking BBS!

Bob: Sweet! What's the number?

war dialing by Phreaking_is_not_dead May 19, 2009

war dialing

Using a port scanner to find vulnerable computer systems.

"I was war dialing the school's network and found a backdoor, so I gave myself strait A's."

war dialing by Subdermal_iPod_implantee December 18, 2006

wardialer

a program to locate listening servers by dialing all the phone numbers within a range. not used anymore for obvious reasons.

i setup the wardialer to hit all the 455 prefix numbers b/c i am an asshole.

wardialer by Alex Price June 16, 2004

wardialing 

Using a computer to dial telephone numbers within a given range, usually with the intention of finding a modem carrier signal. The practice largely predated the widespread penetration of broadband Internet connectivity; at the time, many businesses, agencies, and individuals operated computer systems "on-demand" through telephone-based modems, each of which might (or might not) offer a unique (and possibly privileged) selection of information, as well as possibly offering access to powerful hardware or a platform for reaching other networks and systems. Usually, the wardialer would be covertly planted on a public, shared, or corporate phone line, left to operate for a limited time, then retrieved so that any "positives" (phone lines returning a modem carrier signal) could be investigated later from yet another location. The practice often went hand-in-hand with phreaking, for obvious reasons.

Today, some telemarketing and social research firms use similar programs (usually working from a digital phone book) to reach residential numbers in search of sales or social information. Also, on rare occasions, people engaged in social engineering have used a form of this process to explore "gaps" in corporate phone listings to discover (and identify the owners of) unlisted numbers.

This term directly inspired the term wardriving, due to similarities between the two practices: both return unpredictable results, both require real-world travel, and both activities are done for rather similar reasons. On the other hand, while wardriving is inherently focused on and limited to a specific geographic area, wardialing is a prototypical bruteforce process, much like password cracking, and can theoretically be achieved from any location with a dial tone.

In the 1983 movie Wargames, a teenager engages in wardialing and discovers a backdoor into the NORAD (NAADS) computer system. He then accidentally runs a simulation which almost turns into World War III.

The wardialer is dead. Long live the wardriver.

wardialing by Alfred F. April 1, 2008

wardialing 

Used mostly in the '80s and '90s: having your computer repeatedly dial a number to try and get into a limited-space modem pool immediately after another user hangs up.

An identical technique was sometimes used to get the first call for prizes in radio "call-in" shows, thus leading to the adoption of random "fifth caller," "seventeenth caller" etc. by radio stations to circumvent this practice.

"Dude, AOL was so busy last nite i was wardialing!!!1!!" or: "WKRX still gives the prize to the first caller, so I wardialied it all yesterday and got this sweet CD".

wardialing by Anonymous August 30, 2003