cheese box
nounEtymology (phreaking device): The device could originally be fitted into a wooden box intended for cheese. Compare blue box.
1
Alternative Alternative form of cheesebox (“container for cheese”).
2
A device formerly used by phreakers to convert a home telephone line into a payphone.
- Then the bookie leaves the site of the phone and stations himself blocks away in another room with a phone attached to a similar cheese box.1967, William Surface, Inside Internal Revenue:
- The cheese box bridges two separate telephone lines. It is often used by bookmakers and bettors to place free calls for accepting or placing bets.1978, Bell telephone magazine, volumes 57-58:
1 more example
- There are files circulating about the modem/phreak world regarding a device known as a cheese box.2009, Emmanuel Goldstein, The Best of 2600, Collector's Edition: A Hacker Odyssey, page 40: