For most Around the world, it’s common practice to “root” or “jailbreak” a phone allowing the device owner to install apps and modify software that circumvents the restrictions of Apple or Google’s operating systems. On the other hand, for more and more North Koreans, the same form of hacking allows them to break free from a much more expansive system of control — one that seeks to extend to every aspect of life and mind. their mind.
On Wednesday, the Stimson Center’s North Korea-focused 38 North project released a report on the state of smartphones and telecommunications in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a country that restricts human rights. Citizens’ access to information and the Internet is tighter than any other in the world. The report details how millions of smartphones running the government-approved Android operating system have now made their way into North Korean society, albeit with digital restrictions preventing their users from downloading any any application or even any file that is not officially sanctioned by the state. But within that regime of digital repression, the report also offers a glimpse of a new unlikely group: North Korean prison breakers capable of hacking those smartphones for secrecy. regain control of them and unlock a world of banned foreign content.
“There has been a kind of constant war between the North Korean government and its people over the use of technology: Every time a new technology is introduced, people often find a way to use it for some unusual purpose. But that didn’t happen, said Martyn Williams, a researcher at 38 North. “As for the future of free information in North Korea, it shows that people are still willing to try to disrupt the government control.”
Figuring out anything about the details of subversive activity in Korea – digitally or otherwise – is notoriously difficult, due to the Hermit Kingdom’s near-secret control of information. 38 North’s findings on North Korean prison breaks are based on interviews with just two defectors from the country. But Williams said both escapees independently described hacking their phones and the phones of other North Koreans, almost corroborating each other’s accounts. Other researchers focusing on North Korea have interviewed defectors who say they’ve heard similar stories.
Both escapes interviewed by 38 North said they hacked their phones — mid-range, Chinese-made, government-approved Android phones, called Pyongyang 2423 and 2413 — and owned them. essential so that they can use the device to view foreign media and install applications that are not approved by the government. Their attack, designed to circumvent the government-made version of Android on those phones, for years included a certificate system that required any file downloaded to the device to be “signed” with cryptographic signatures from government agencies, otherwise, it is immediately and automatically deleted. Both jailbreakers said they were able to remove that certificate validation scheme from the phone, allowing them to install banned apps, such as games, as well as foreign media such as Korean movies, TV shows and e-books. The people of North Korea have sought access for decades despite the government’s draconian ban.
In another Orwellian measure, the operating system created by the Pyongyang phone government takes screenshots of the device at random intervals, the two defectors say – a surveillance feature designed to create the feeling that the user is always being watched. The images from those screenshots are then kept in an inaccessible part of the phone’s memory, where they cannot be viewed or deleted. Jailbreaking the phone also allowed the two fugitives to access and wipe those surveillance screenshots, they said.
