North Korean tablet Woolim. Photo: Joseph Cox / Motherboard

Whatever the Western imperialists may think, industry, information technology and communications are successfully developing in the DPRK. Every wealthy citizen has the opportunity to buy a tablet and go to the local Internet called Kwangmyeong (if he managed to pre-charge the battery during those hours when electricity is supplied). The country has even developed its own operating system, very similar to Mac OS X.

Big brother is watching you

The nation’s leader told DPRK programmers that it’s important to develop their own national software.

North Korea has created its own full-fledged operating system RedStar OS based on a free Linux system. This unique system is installed on the computers of the DPRK. If you think that the RedStar OS distribution is different from other Linux distributions, then you are right. Last year, hackers Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schiess analyzed the additional functionality of RedStar OS ( report video ), which was made possible due to the leakage of the third version of RedStar OS in 2014. The analysis showed a lot of interesting things. For example, a number of encrypted functions (in the screenshot on the left) of spyware are found. Documents have watermarks that are not deleted when editing a document. Thus, the government can determine on which computer any document is created. A very useful feature, and there are a lot of such useful functions in RedStar OS.
')
Westerners living in debauchery and lust only envy the purity of the thoughts and inquisitiveness of the North Koreans, because they are interested in science and technology - most of the Kwanmen sites are dedicated to scientific and technical topics, and their content is verified by the Computer Information Center. Similarly, the government checks and certifies documents and computer programs.

If the user tries to run an extraneous file on the computer without a cryptographic signature, the system plays the file with the pig's screaming. The sound is shamelessly stolen from Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Any file that is not approved by the government is perceived by the operating system as a malicious file (with swine squealing).

Thanks to the defense of the party and the leader, the people of the DPRK are the happiest people in the world. They traditionally occupy the first places in the world rankings of countries in terms of the subjective feeling of happiness. But even in such a cloudless picture of universal happiness and prosperity, the government and intelligence must be constantly vigilant.


Operating system Red Star OS. Slide from the presentation of the Lifting the Fog on the Red Star OS , presented on 12/28/2015 at the hacker conference Chaos Communication Congress

It should be carefully monitored so that one of the citizens does not accidentally succumb to Western propaganda and hostile thinking. For the benefit of the users themselves, the RedStar OS operating system is equipped with advanced functions for covert surveillance. If a citizen gave up the slack and launched an obscene program, caring comrades will always come to the rescue.

North Korean OS RedStar OS (32C3 report)

New DPRK Tablets

The same authors Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schiess, and Manuel Lubetzki, who joined them, continued the exploration of North Korean computer technology this year. Now their interest was attracted by the latest model of the North Korean Woolim tablet ( video report , 63 minutes).

The Woolim tablet is not the only one that is sold in the DPRK, but it is one of the most recent models available to locals. The model dates back to 2015.



There is nothing unusual in the hardware configuration; the device is manufactured by the Chinese company Hoozo . But before selling to North Korean citizens, the tablets are slightly modified. The government removes unnecessary components from them, including WiFi and Bluetooth modules, and also complements the Android operating system by installing additional programs on top of the standard kernel. Interestingly, the first launch of the tablet is accompanied by a presentation accompanied by the familiar song of the local group Chongbong about the launch of a nuclear-powered ballistic missile into the United States. This is a real musical masterpiece of girls from Chongbong, so beloved in the country.

The tablet is equipped with software to view the national television of the DPRK and connect to Gwanmenu. There are educational programs, dictionaries of French, Russian, Chinese and other languages, other interesting programs like a learning program for children, which teaches them to type text on the keyboard, games like Angry Birds , adapted for local users.

Tablet functionality is limited at the software level. Before opening the document, he verifies his cryptographic signature. Thus, the user will not be able to open an arbitrary document. Only the one created on this tablet (for example, a photo) or approved by the government with the issuance of a digital signature (some PDF documents). The same applies to .APK programs — for the tablet to launch a package for installation, it must be approved by the government. In general, OS protection is implemented at the same high level as in RedStar OS.

It’s pretty hard for a regular user to bypass such protection, and this is a very good idea for the governments of other countries who want to protect their citizens from harmful information, from propaganda of suicides and other obscenities of Western society.

DPRK's totalitarian tablet (report on 33C3)


So that the citizen does not have the temptation to launch a dubious program or open a prohibited document, the tablet constantly monitors citizen activity. “This is a clear message to the citizen: we see what you did,” says Florian Grunow, one of the authors of the report at the hacker conference Chaos Communication Congress.

The authors express some confusion about the target audience of the tablet, the cost of which should exceed 160-200 euros, judging by the configuration. Probably, in the DPRK, such a pleasure can only be afforded by the party nomenclature and people close to them. But even they need strict supervision.