Florian Grunow

Last year we have been talking about DPRK’s operating system Red Star OS and its surveillance features. We have identified a watermarking mechanism and gave an insight on the internals of the operating system itself. This year we will be talking about one of DPRK’s Tablet PCs, called Woolim.

The tablet PC contains a similar watermarking mechanism that can be used to track and prevent the distribution of unwanted media files in a more advanced and effective way. In addition, Woolim contains a remarkable hardening and jails the user to protect the integrity of the system. The tablet itself and the Apps that are preinstalled provide a rare insight into DPRK’s development in the IT sector. We will lift the fog on the internals of Woolim and provide a deep dive into the internals of the tablet PC. Over the past years DPRK released several different tablet PCs. This talk will focus on what seems to be the latest device called Woolim (울림), which is the Korean word for „echo“. It was build in late 2015 and the device is an outstanding piece of technology designed to jail users to predefined functionality and track the user's behavior. We will start by giving an introduction to the hardware specifications of the tablet. The device is equipped with a wide variety of applications. Users are able to read and create documents, watch movies, visit websites and play games. There are also a bunch of dictionaries on the device. We will give an introduction to the most interesting applications and features of the tablet. The applications that come with Woolim give a rare insight into how technology is used and distributed in DPRK. All of the applications on Woolim have been touched by DPRK, even games like Angry Birds have been modified. The features implemented to jail the user and protect the integrity of the system will also be in focus for this talk. We have published a detailed analysis of a watermarking mechanism in DPRK’s Red Star OS last year, speculating that the code in Red Star OS already contains some preparations for a far more sophisticated watermarking mechanism. We have identified such advanced mechanisms in Woolim and will give a technical insight on how they prevent distribution of unwanted media more effectively. DPRK continues to develop surveillance technology that is hidden inside consumer hardware. It’s goal seems to be to enable total control of it’s users in terms of tracking the distribution of media files and preventing unwanted information in the DPRK ecosystem. Implementing such features into smartphones or tablet PCs like Woolim allows even more effective surveillance of DPRK citizens. Therefore, we will try to shed some light on the privacy invading features of Woolim.

Other people: Niklaus Schiess Manuel Lubetzki

Angae means "Fog" in Korean. The term is widely used in parts of custom code used by the Red Star OS. We will lift the fog on the internals of North Korea's operating system. Our talk will provide information about how privacy is invaded for all users of Red Star OS and how an operating system designed by a totalitarian dictatorship works.

In 2014 the version 3 of North Korea's Red Star operating system was leaked. It is based on Linux and has the look and feel of a Mac. There is also a server version available. We will start the presentation by giving a general overview and presenting findings that already hit the net during the last year, like research on Red Star’s custom browser and its configuration. The focus of the presentation is to explain in depth how the architecture of the components is made up and to give a detailed overview of the privacy invading custom code implemented into the OS. The system is designed to defend and protect itself from changes made from user space. We will analyze the interaction of the components and the protection mechanisms and provide information on how to deactivate some of the malicious functionality of Red Star OS. North Korea abuses the principals of free software to provide an operating system that suppresses free speech. Therefore we think it is necessary to disclose this information to the public and present the audience on how to get around the limitations introduced by North Korea. Investigating functionality that can be used to invade the privacy of users was our primary goal. We found that the features implemented in Red Star OS are the wet dream of a surveillance state dictator. It provides a set of surveillance features like the capabilities to watermark different types of files that can be used to track the distribution of documents and multi-media files. We will have an in depth look on how some of these features built the foundation for a suppressive state in a modern world.

Other people: Niklaus Schiess