The most devastating attacks don't require sophisticated hacking, just patience, automation, and a phone line
In 1985, Edward Johnson sat in his Atlanta home staring at his television screen, watching the Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr. make another impassioned appeal for donations. The toll-free number flashed across the bottom: 1-800-1-PRAY. Call anytime, operators standing by, absolutely free for the caller.
Johnson's jaw tightened. He'd watched his mother send money to Falwell's ministry month after month, persuaded by the televangelist's promises of spiritual salvation and political righteousness. Johnson believed his mother, like thousands of others, had been swindled by a man who wrapped personal enrichment in the language of faith. Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour was pulling in over $72 million annually through those toll-free appeals, building an empire that included Liberty University and the political powerhouse known as the Moral Majority.
But as Johnson watched that phone number flash on screen, something clicked. He was a computer enthusiast with an Atari home computer and basic programming knowledge. And he understood something most people didn't think about: how toll-free numbers actually worked.
In the 1980s, 1-800 numbers operated on a reverse-charge system. When someone called a toll-free line, the organization receiving the call paid all charges—typically about one dollar per call. It was a brilliant marketing tool. Callers felt no friction, no cost barrier to picking up the phone and making a donation. For ministries like Falwell's, that psychological advantage was worth millions.
Johnson saw the vulnerability immediately. If each call cost Falwell's organization money, and if no one was checking who was calling or why, then the system was wide open to exploitation. You didn't need to hack anything. You didn't need special access. You just needed persistence.
Johnson sat down at his Atari computer and wrote a simple program. The code would dial Falwell's toll-free number, let it ring until someone picked up, then immediately hang up and dial again thirty seconds later. Over and over. Endlessly. The program would run automatically, requiring no human intervention. Just electricity and a phone line.
In 1985, he started the program. Every thirty seconds, like clockwork, his computer dialed 1-800-1-PRAY. The call would connect, ringing through the phone network. An operator would answer—"Old Time Gospel Hour, how can we pray for you today?"—and hear only silence, then a click. Thirty seconds later, another call. Then another. Then another.
At first, it was just an annoyance. But Johnson's program ran continuously. Every thirty seconds, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Two calls per minute meant 120 calls per hour. That was 2,880 calls per day. At roughly one dollar per call, Johnson's automated dialing was costing Falwell's ministry nearly $3,000 daily.
As weeks turned to months, the financial impact became severe. But the operational damage was even worse. Falwell's toll-free lines were designed to handle perhaps a few hundred calls per day from genuine donors and prayer seekers. Johnson's relentless automated assault overwhelmed the system. Real callers couldn't get through. Legitimate donors heard busy signals. Prayer requests went unanswered.
The phone company's infrastructure began to buckle under the strain. In 1985, telephone routing systems were mechanical and limited. When one number received excessive traffic, it could jam entire exchanges, affecting other customers. Johnson's attack was creating cascading problems throughout the network.
Falwell's organization quickly realized something was wrong. The bills kept climbing—$10,000, $50,000, $100,000. Operators reported the same pattern: calls that connected, dead air, immediate hang-ups, over and over from the same source. But stopping it wasn't simple. The calls were technically legitimate. No laws were being broken in any obvious way. Someone was just... calling. A lot.
Johnson wasn't alone in his campaign. As TIME magazine reported in 1987, LGBT activists, angered by Falwell's crusade against gay rights, were organizing their own phone campaigns Time. Student newspapers published Falwell's toll-free numbers with explicit instructions to flood the lines. The University of Wisconsin's Daily Cardinal ran articles advocating "telephone terrorism" against Falwell and other conservative targets.
By late 1985, the situation had reached crisis levels. Falwell's organization estimated they were losing over $1 million annually to nuisance calls. But Johnson's automated assault was the most damaging and relentless. Month after month, his Atari computer dutifully dialed, costing Falwell's ministry between $500,000 and $750,000 depending on which source you consult.
Finally, Southern Bell intervened. As the phone company, they had both the authority and the motivation to stop the attack—Johnson's calls were straining their network infrastructure and affecting other customers. They contacted Johnson directly and forced him to shut down his program. After eight months, the automated siege ended.
Falwell's ministry didn't take the attacks lightly. Falwell considered legal action, calling the campaigns "unlawful activities" that did "injury to the cause of Christ" Time. But the legal landscape was murky. Were automated phone calls illegal? Was deliberately overwhelming a toll-free number a crime? In 1985, there were no clear precedents.
In 1986, facing mounting losses and operational chaos, Falwell made a decision: he disconnected the toll-free prayer lines entirely. The very tool that had helped him build a $72-million-per-year empire became too expensive and vulnerable to maintain. The calls stopped, but so did the easy access that had made fundraising so effective.
Edward Johnson's eight-month campaign became one of the earliest recorded examples of what we'd now call a denial-of-service attack. He didn't hack into computer systems or break encryption. He didn't steal data or plant viruses. He simply understood how a public system worked and exploited its fundamental design flaw. The toll-free number was meant to remove barriers to calling. Johnson turned that openness into a weapon.
The incident exposed critical vulnerabilities in telephone network infrastructure. In 1985, there were no rate limits, no automated fraud detection systems, no sophisticated call-pattern analysis. The phone system operated on trust and the assumption that people wouldn't deliberately abuse it at scale. Johnson proved that assumption dangerously wrong.
Today, Johnson's tactics would be illegal under computer fraud and telecommunications abuse laws. Modern phone systems have protections against this kind of attack—rate limiting, call-pattern detection, automated blocking of suspicious traffic. But in 1985, those safeguards didn't exist.
The deeper question Johnson's attack raised was never fully resolved: When does legitimate use of a public system become abuse? If a toll-free number is truly open to anyone, can you be punished for calling it too many times? Where's the line between free speech and harassment, between activism and criminality?
Falwell clearly saw it as theft and sabotage. Johnson saw it as holding a powerful man accountable for what he viewed as financial exploitation of vulnerable believers, including his own mother. The truth probably lies somewhere in between—a frustrated son using technical knowledge to strike back at an organization he believed had caused real harm, but doing so in a way that cost money, disrupted services, and affected innocent people trying to reach the prayer line for legitimate reasons.
Edward Johnson's Atari computer is long obsolete. Toll-free prayer lines have been replaced by websites, social media, and sophisticated digital fundraising. But the fundamental lesson remains relevant: any system designed for openness and access can be weaponized by someone creative enough to see its vulnerabilities. And sometimes, the most devastating attacks don't require sophisticated hacking—just patience, automation, and a phone line.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for sharing!
