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I do wonder where they source the talent and expertise with these platforms necessary to pull something like this off. I understand that's kind of a naive quest

I do wonder where they source the talent and expertise with these platforms necessary to pull something like this off. I understand that's kind of a naive question—any functional state has sufficient resources to solve such problems for itself—but one does wonder. I can only assume there was extensive Chinese help. They definitely have the critical mass of engineering ecosystem for that sort of endeavour.

lucaspiller 10y ago
If you think about, the NSA, GCHQ, etc probably run similar software on their own devices to monitor employees and be able to trace back where any leaks came from. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a commercial company that sells this type of software.
- cyphar 10y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if there is a commercial company that sells this type of software. BlueCoat. They're called BlueCoat. As an aside, a subdivision of Intel actually runs the internet filters for some middle eastern country (due to some chain of acquisitions). Isn't that great.
  - willstrafach 10y ago
    BlueCoat is used in private industry for security / DLP, certainly, but IC agencies have their own comprehensive systems in place to ensure sensitive data access is highly controlled and audited.
- willstrafach 10y ago
  It would probably be a massive scandal if they were not protecting their endpoints and networks in any way they feasibly could, due to the sensitivity of the information being handled.
sametmax 10y ago
No. They killed they intellectual elite and added a system in place to make sure they will never grow a new one. The reality is way worst: some company from our countries accepted a contract with NK and built that for them. I know that my country, France, is actually pretty famous for their surveillance technology. We have companies such as Amesys that have been caught blatantly selling huge systems for spying on entire countries. Nobody bats an eye because they make banks. So the UK, Israel, the US or France probably made the tablet. Knowingly.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  Would NK trust a Western country to make their spy tech? I'd be worried about getting free rootkit updates from the CIA and UK spooks.
  - abalashov 10y ago
    That's kind of where I was coming from in suggesting that the tech had to come from China. But then again, commerce can make strange bedfellows.
im3w1l 10y ago
The people who say "I could build that app in a weekend".. You know some of them are actually right? What they maybe couldn't do is get it 100% as polished, and they may lack the marketing skills to make it go big, or the VC connections, or any other important factor. My point is that it doesn't take that much manpower to build a working system, so it should be well within North Koreas reach. That their system is less polished matters little, as would-be competitors don't have access. And building their own system from scratch has a killer feature: None of the data will be slurped up by the US or its megacorps.

lucaspiller 10y ago

If you think about, the NSA, GCHQ, etc probably run similar software on their own devices to monitor employees and be able to trace back where any leaks came from. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a commercial company that sells this type of software.

cyphar 10y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if there is a commercial company that sells this type of software. BlueCoat. They're called BlueCoat. As an aside, a subdivision of Intel actually runs the internet filters for some middle eastern country (due to some chain of acquisitions). Isn't that great.
- willstrafach 10y ago
  BlueCoat is used in private industry for security / DLP, certainly, but IC agencies have their own comprehensive systems in place to ensure sensitive data access is highly controlled and audited.
willstrafach 10y ago
It would probably be a massive scandal if they were not protecting their endpoints and networks in any way they feasibly could, due to the sensitivity of the information being handled.

sametmax 10y ago

No. They killed they intellectual elite and added a system in place to make sure they will never grow a new one. The reality is way worst: some company from our countries accepted a contract with NK and built that for them. I know that my country, France, is actually pretty famous for their surveillance technology. We have companies such as Amesys that have been caught blatantly selling huge systems for spying on entire countries. Nobody bats an eye because they make banks. So the UK, Israel, the US or France probably made the tablet. Knowingly.

ourmandave 10y ago
Would NK trust a Western country to make their spy tech? I'd be worried about getting free rootkit updates from the CIA and UK spooks.
- abalashov 10y ago
  That's kind of where I was coming from in suggesting that the tech had to come from China. But then again, commerce can make strange bedfellows.

im3w1l 10y ago

The people who say "I could build that app in a weekend".. You know some of them are actually right? What they maybe couldn't do is get it 100% as polished, and they may lack the marketing skills to make it go big, or the VC connections, or any other important factor. My point is that it doesn't take that much manpower to build a working system, so it should be well within North Koreas reach. That their system is less polished matters little, as would-be competitors don't have access. And building their own system from scratch has a killer feature: None of the data will be slurped up by the US or its megacorps.