4 ms·

Considering the source (of the OS, that is), it begs the question whether these bugs are accidental or deliberate. Or, put another way - would using a fully pa

by lb1lf 10y ago

Considering the source (of the OS, that is), it begs the question whether these bugs are accidental or deliberate. Or, put another way - would using a fully patched and hardened Linux distro of some denomination or the other warrant a visit from the secret police, suggesting you revert to using Red Star for -ahem- patriotic and surveillance purposes?

the_duke 10y ago
That doesn't really make sense. RedStar OS contains all the surveilance features North Korea could possibly want anyway [1]. Why would you need backdoors when you have a widely opened front door? I would strongly assume that using RedStar is mandatory in NK. [1] http://www.securityweek.com/north-koreas-red-star-os-government-surveillance-its-best http://www.securityweek.com/north-koreas-red-star-os-governm...
- lb1lf 10y ago
  True, but if I were of a sufficiently paranoid bent, I would appreciate having a toolkit full of exploits to use as news of other surveillance features spread. Someone clever/subversive enough could feasibly create a samizdat Red Star distro which had most of the known surveillance features disabled, for instance.
cstross 10y ago
Almost certainly accidental. Consider the population of NK (not large — 24 million). Now consider that it's a closed society; access to foreign media and learning materials is going to be restricted. Now on top of that, consider that learning to program requires (a) learning an enemy language (danger! spy/defector warning klaxon!) and then access to lots of presumed-subversive foreign tracts that are sufficiently abstruse and arcane to give the state censors a really big headache ... I bet that cuts down the developer pool a little, doesn't it? If you can only allow ideologically trustworthy people access to the material they need in order to learn to code, which you need in order to build a guaranteed ideologically sanitized sandbox OS in which you can raise your less-definitely-loyal future cadres of infowar warriors, then you don't have many developers and they are picked for their loyalty rather than their ability by managers who literally can't understand the hacker mindset. (Or even the ordinary working stiff business app developer mindset.) So RedStar was probably thrown together in a hurry by a handful of amateur programmers/professional party cadres in an atmosphere of extreme mistrust and paranoia that rewards sweeping problems under the rug (where the big party bosses won't know to look for them). Hence it being a knock-off of Red Hat 3 from 1998 with added Hangul text handling, or something.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  This. They're worried that if they let their dev's google everything their devs will defect.

by lb1lf 10y ago

the_duke 10y ago

That doesn't really make sense. RedStar OS contains all the surveilance features North Korea could possibly want anyway [1]. Why would you need backdoors when you have a widely opened front door? I would strongly assume that using RedStar is mandatory in NK. [1] http://www.securityweek.com/north-koreas-red-star-os-government-surveillance-its-best http://www.securityweek.com/north-koreas-red-star-os-governm...

lb1lf 10y ago
True, but if I were of a sufficiently paranoid bent, I would appreciate having a toolkit full of exploits to use as news of other surveillance features spread. Someone clever/subversive enough could feasibly create a samizdat Red Star distro which had most of the known surveillance features disabled, for instance.

cstross 10y ago

Almost certainly accidental. Consider the population of NK (not large — 24 million). Now consider that it's a closed society; access to foreign media and learning materials is going to be restricted. Now on top of that, consider that learning to program requires (a) learning an enemy language (danger! spy/defector warning klaxon!) and then access to lots of presumed-subversive foreign tracts that are sufficiently abstruse and arcane to give the state censors a really big headache ... I bet that cuts down the developer pool a little, doesn't it? If you can only allow ideologically trustworthy people access to the material they need in order to learn to code, which you need in order to build a guaranteed ideologically sanitized sandbox OS in which you can raise your less-definitely-loyal future cadres of infowar warriors, then you don't have many developers and they are picked for their loyalty rather than their ability by managers who literally can't understand the hacker mindset. (Or even the ordinary working stiff business app developer mindset.) So RedStar was probably thrown together in a hurry by a handful of amateur programmers/professional party cadres in an atmosphere of extreme mistrust and paranoia that rewards sweeping problems under the rug (where the big party bosses won't know to look for them). Hence it being a knock-off of Red Hat 3 from 1998 with added Hangul text handling, or something.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
This. They're worried that if they let their dev's google everything their devs will defect.