[HN Gopher] North Koreans are jailbreaking phones to access forb... ___________________________________________________________________ North Koreans are jailbreaking phones to access forbidden media Author : 8bitsrule Score : 137 points Date : 2022-04-27 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.wired.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com) | decremental wrote: | I just imagine some North Korean jailbreaking his phone and | accessing content from the west and thinking "nope!" | timcavel wrote: | rmatt2000 wrote: | This is extraordinarily brave, given what usually happens to | people who possess illegal content in NK. I think I'll stick to | criticizing politically unpopular people on Twitter. | [deleted] | coliveira wrote: | Soon we'll have to do the same. A lot of media that has been | considered "bad" for some definition of "bad" has been banned in | western countries. | azinman2 wrote: | There is absolutely no comparison with North Korea. Sorry | that's just preposterous. | pessimizer wrote: | Yes, it's terrible how North Korea has made it so difficult to | have root on your own phone. | readingnews wrote: | I see what you did there. | | And I looked down at my phone. | | And I made myself sad. | lazyier wrote: | Not attacking you personally, but it's important to keep this | stuff in mind when we make choices as customers. Consumers | are cattle. Don't be like cattle. Use your money for good. | | ---------------- | | The difference between you and North Korea is that nobody is | holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy phones you | can't root. | | Which means that it is very likely that you volunteered for | it. Unless somebody else paid for it, like work. Then that is | their problem. I still recommend buying your own phone. | | Why did you do that? | | Is it because the phone is a particular brand that is | fashionable and you want that to reflect on you when you use | the phone around other people? Is it because it is cheaper to | buy because the phone company subsidizes the phone in order | to sell you spyware you can't get rid of and to lock in | reliable monthly payments from you? | | There are lots of reasons people do this. Maybe it's just | ignorance. Maybe they tell themselves they don't have | anything to hide. Maybe having control over the things in | they own seems like too much work or too intimidating. | | Because it is extremely likely you actually had a choice and | your choice was to sell your freedom in exchange for shiny | baubles. | | You didn't have to do that. And you don't have to continue to | do that. You have a choice. You have the power. You really | do. | | This is important because you have the chance to financially | reward people that want to preserve your freedom or you can | financially reward people that take it away. | | This is the power you have. It is more democratic than | voting. It also matters much more. | asdff wrote: | I mean otoh the market only offers so much choice and often | established producers work to make it more difficult for up | and comers to themselves be established. We are infact | often cattle whose choices are limited to merely where we | can stand within a tightly controlled field of very limited | size, especially when many of these tools we are reliant | upon in modern life can no longer be practically made in | the home. | l33t2328 wrote: | Maybe they, like many others, don't care one iota about | having root on their phone. | | > sell your freedom | | That's hyperbolic to the point of killing the discussion. | jjoonathan wrote: | Most people can't be experts at most things. That's how | specialization works. | | It's easy to blame consumerism and people being dumb when | you look at a single market, but there are hundreds of | markets and in the other 99 we're the dumb ones. | Nextgrid wrote: | > nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy | phones you can't root | | The DMCA (and to a lesser extent, CFAA) is routinely abused | by software & hardware manufacturers to prevent people from | taking control of their own devices, and if you do it at a | large scale then you will eventually end up with a gun to | your head. | reedjosh wrote: | I mean the Pixel series of phones are built to be | unlockable/root-able straight from google.. | dane-pgp wrote: | We need a "Right to Repair Democracy". | [deleted] | qclibre22 wrote: | Can't they triangulate the location regardless? Pretty risky to | challenge the supreme leader. | djanogo wrote: | US populace would also need jail broken phones as soon as the | new DHS "Disinformation Governance Board"[1] starts blocking at | platform/DNS/ISP level. | | [1]https://twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1519282822158110721 | gsk22 wrote: | Come on, your link provides no evidence that this Board would | (or even could) block any internet traffic. Don't spread FUD. | robonerd wrote: | Sure, they just want to govern 'misinformation' but surely | they don't mean to censor anything. Sure... Why would you | even _dream_ of giving the DHS the benefit of the doubt? | LAC-Tech wrote: | It always relieves me to know that while foreign regimes | censor news, western regimes only censor misinformation. | Glad we've kept the moral high ground. | swader999 wrote: | Should have just gone with Ministry of Truth. Why try to hide | it. | toast0 wrote: | I was always a fan of the name House Un-American Activities | Committee; which is the committee where they did un- | american things. Truth in advertising. | noasaservice wrote: | Jailbroken = proper ownership of purchased hardware | | Companies retaining control should not be legal to call as a | sale. And my guess is that people will not be happy when their | $1000 phone is really a rental, legally speaking. | | EDIT: A lot of people here really hate ownership and freedom for | hardware you bought. -1's and stockholm syndrome are definitely a | thing. | bdcravens wrote: | I'm guessing most people in NK aren't carrying $1000 phones. | They are carrying "...government-approved, Android-based | smartphones...". Your statement about companies controlling the | devices is certainly worth arguing for, but it's a different, | far more draconian situation in North Korea. | asdff wrote: | It's the same situation, just taken to the extreme | conclusion. We see varying shades of control of electronics | from different governments and corporations, but at the end | of the day putting a stop to any of these varying amounts of | control requires the same solution: being allowed to use a | computer for general purpose computing. | kube-system wrote: | In the case of North Korea, the state of computing norms in | the rest of the world have no bearing on the situation | there. | | Even Linux spies on users in North Korea. | | If every smartphone on the planet had full root access, NK | would simply not allow smartphones. | MiddleEndian wrote: | Agreed. In the age of restrictive software, the term "sale" | should be more heavily protected. | kube-system wrote: | These are phones locked down by the power of the North Korean | government, not by the choice of any company. | noasaservice wrote: | The same techniques used to lock down US phones from owners | is the same one NK is using. | | Or do you think those "features" were added in just for the | totalitarian markets? | kube-system wrote: | The features you're talking about were developed to close | legitimate security holes before they were ever used to | lock anyone out from their phones. | endofreach wrote: | I don't quite understand why most of that wasn't blocked on their | (i guess) government ISP? | Vladimof wrote: | That's why Google doesn't want you to unlock boot-loaders even if | they allow you to ... | | I get that warning about my unlocked boot loader every time I | boot... | rektide wrote: | The United States should back it's (alleged) principles & help | develop & spread liberalizing, anti-authoritarian software, like | this. | | This is still couched as consuming media. The stakes are higher, | but I'd have us go further: try to allow person to person, group, | & broadcast communication in places where the internet is being | subverted & blocked. | | "The Internet interprts censorship as damage and routes around | it". -John Gilmore. | | Alas the current regimes, bith conservative & liberal, are more | focused around demanding things of the internet & making up new | regulation, bith as a direct threat to letting people operate & | maintain presence they would online. It's extremely hard days | seeing one of the greatest emerged possibilities in the world- a | universal right to speech & connect- clambored over & shouted | down like this. Stories like this & others, of helping people see | beyond their oppressive regimes, need much bigger celebration & | support. | lgvln wrote: | I'm not optimistic, considering the state of democracy in US. | It looks like liberalism and democracy is insufficient to | counteract the ill effects of capitalism - the transformation | of society from a market economy to a market society. | commandlinefan wrote: | > It looks like liberalism | | I'm not sure what you mean by "liberalism" in this context, | but over here, it's liberalism that has us relying on | billionaires to buy media platforms so that _we_ get access | to forbidden media. | l33t2328 wrote: | That's just not true. You can host a web server and share | whatever legal media you'd like. | [deleted] | bitwize wrote: | > "The Internet interprts censorship as damage and routes | around it". -John Gilmore. | | This is one of those old bromides like Postel's law that just | doesn't reflect the reality of the situation in the modern | world. Today's modern equivalent would be "The net interprets | heterodoxy as noise and filters it out." The most recent | example being, a guy asked about what it would take to get | Twitter's AS depeered for "disruptive activity" after the Musk | acquisition: | | https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages-discussion/2022-Ap... | | It's probably difficult and unpopular among the large telecom | firms to do this now, but with the right incentives we may see | sites depeered for political reasons in the future. | traceroute66 wrote: | > The United States should back it's (alleged) principles & | help develop & spread liberalizing, anti-authoritarian | software, like this. | | Says someone who's clearly never lived in an authoritarian | regime. | | Tell me, how would the US "spread" such software in North Korea | ? | | What do you think will happen to your average North Korean who | gets caught with this US-backed anti-authoritarian software ? | rektide wrote: | If i had all the answers i'd be doing it. Wifi-p2p, | bluetooth-le broadcasts... who knows. We need more trying | stuff. | | This salty snippy rejectionist behavior doesnt help. Being so | certain of failure, convincing everyone not to try to improve | things, swearing all attempts are futile... dont you see what | vaccuous sucking nihilism this is? It's badgering & bullying | to have a stance that is so uncompromising, that is phrased | so demeaningly. It's excessive. | | I dont know what happens. Maybe we find some fantastic covert | plausible deniability systems- launch the tech as a small | payload in every top 10 site on the planet. Maybe NK doesnt | end up being a good spot for freedomware. Maybe it helps | Russia, or Myanmar. Doing nothing will help no oppressed | people ever: that I promise. Lets not be cowards, let's find | some principled things to explore & advance, lets try. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Well, how does such software currently spread in North Korea? | And, what do you think will happen to your average North | Korean who gets caught with the current non-US-backed anti- | authoritarian software? | | But then when we look deeper, it gets more complicated. Could | we make software that is easier to use and harder to detect? | Probably. If someone gets caught with it, will they be in | _more_ trouble than they would with non-US-backed software | that had similar functionality? Very likely. If the time | comes when NK figures out how to track it, and more people | have it on their phones because we encouraged them, and the | hammer comes down on them, but more information got into NK | because of this, is that a good trade-off or a bad one? (I 'm | not even going to propose an answer to that question...) | | Love your username, by the way. | TremendousJudge wrote: | >Tell me, how would the US "spread" such software in North | Korea ? | | Maybe in a way similar to Stuxnet? | pessimizer wrote: | The United States doesn't help people in the United States | jailbreak their phones. | ricardobeat wrote: | Surely reporting this, including specific phone models, will only | make it even more difficult for them? | not2b wrote: | No, because they already know this is going on, and they know | the small number of phone models available in NK. | chernevik wrote: | Umm, is this newsworthy? | | I am surely glad it is happening, and hope that it happens more. | | But perhaps the article draws regime attention to | vulnerabilities, and helps the regime defeat them? | | Not everything interesting should be published. | dylan604 wrote: | If you think that the North Koreans would be unwares that | people are trying to circumvent anything unless they read it on | HN, then you are just not very imaginative. | jeroenhd wrote: | Weird to see "jailbreak" used in the context of Android phones, | but I guess a it's fitting for an operating system where people | can only ever install what the maker of their operating system | allows. | | For a totalitarian regime, it's a little surprising to see the | devices still getting cracked, especially with the relatively | small portion of the populace that can afford to get a computer | science education. | sva_ wrote: | They often run very old versions, also on their Linux systems | ("Red Star OS"). For someone with outside knowledge, it'd | probably be trivial to acquire root | firephonestival wrote: | North Koreans have been "jailbreaking" their electronics for a | long time. | | There are some good books about how ordinary people lived up to | around Kim Jong-Un's reign, such as "Nothing to Envy" and | "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader". | | Devices such as TVs and radios were always set to only receive | state broadcasts, and they are subject to regular inspections. | But the safety measures were cheaply produced on a small scale, | often a simple mechanical limit on a dial housed behind tamper- | evident stickers. | | The Tumen River has also been a traditionally porous border | where black market media (and cosmetics, food, electronics, | etc) could flow freely. As is usual in an authoritarian regime, | well-connected people can ignore the rules, smart/wealthy | people can work around them, and the occasional unlucky person | can be made into an example. | daniel-cussen wrote: | > The Tumen River has also been a traditionally porous border | where black market media (and cosmetics, food, electronics, | etc) could flow freely. As is usual in an authoritarian | regime, well-connected people can ignore the rules, | smart/wealthy people can work around them, and the occasional | unlucky person can be made into an example. | | Sounds about right. Yeah and also, there's media that is | freely distributed just for fun, and I think everyone can | play Starcraft...there has to be a way. Game of cat and | mouse. It's not just about what's forbidden and what's not | it's also about bribing a little bit here, a little bit | there...working the system, find a little something in the | regular Wednesday (?) black market, hear a little | secret...and as long as you're visibly contributing to | society overall, you can push the envelope. Same as anywhere, | Cuba is big on "sobrecumplir" meaning exceed expectations. If | you do that, you can do all kinds of stuff. | | So what is also missing from these viewpoints is that yeah on | an individual basis, individual freedom, Koreans have fairly | little of that to be sure. And it's not only due to rules, | the rules and strictness is interwoven with the poverty, they | cannot be thought of independently. If a country is poor, its | prisons have to be that much worse than a rich country's for | them to be a deterrent to theft. And that's just one example. | | But collective freedom! Now that's a different story. These | Koreans have a lot of that! Basically they gave up all their | individual freedom in exchange for all the collective freedom | they could possibly get. That's how you end up with Juche, | for instance, mostly a way to accept poverty down the line | but in exchange never allow foreign powers to perform | manipulation through trade. And in fact, in the last "maximum | pressure" period that Trump imposed, Korea didn't budge or | suffer.[1] And for collective freedom the people--to my | fullest understanding--need an autocrat, autocrator [2], the | one guy everyone else in society stands in the way of bullets | for, and who then thinks of all of them in return without any | interference from foreign manipulation. Democracy is then in | terms of the neurons of the autocrator. Any one of these | neurons can change his mind completely[2], without tallying | ballots or recounts. | | [1] The price of rice didn't change under sanctions. A big | reason given, though there were several, was that because | North Korea's agriculture was generally not mechanized, State | Dept. couldn't squeeze them on the availability of spare | parts for machines. That was a huge surprise for State...and | on top of that the counterfeiting. So while United States can | owns the ability to print dollars, _so does North Korea_. How | good would you think they would get if they made it a | national priority? The brightest minds, thinking of ways to | make a Benjamin cheaper than $100. It 's a super simple goal. | I think anybody can forge them for $1000 apiece, but to get | it down under $100, ah! So while South Korea sends its | brightest minds (in this case best test scores, they are | totally subscribed to that) to eg Stanford, North Korea keeps | them right put, working on sovereignty. Nationalism. Like | they can get a 99 percentile student on every square | millimeter of the $100 dollar bill. And get this, the North | historically had better students than the South, especially | the most mountainous areas, those had the most Yangban | standardized exam passers. Because what else will you do with | your time but study! | | That's what I gather from reading beyond the curriculum of | Stanford's Korean History class. | | [2] I think in Russia the Czar is called an autocrator | internally, Czar was the external name. | | [3] This concept was enshrined in the Choson dynasty, | absolutely any son of the King could inherit the throne, | without any restrictions on whom his mother was. Although I | know little of palatial uh...well conspiracies, what else | could you call them...dynamics. Dynamics. There were rules, | and nuance, and many interests at play. | TremendousJudge wrote: | >well-connected people can ignore the rules, smart/wealthy | people can work around them, and the occasional unlucky | person can be made into an example. | | This is true of any regime, really. Just that the rules are | more restrictive in the more authoritarian version. | Kye wrote: | Humans are adaptable. I figured out how to connect all the | computers in the house over a LAN and dial the living room | computer's modem on activity when I was little. Computer | science is just a way of discovering and sharing a niche of | adaptations. | tragictrash wrote: | I don't think computer science education applies here. These | people are looking for a solution and smart enough to follow | the bread crumbs. | | That's what we do best - adapt. | DaltonCoffee wrote: | Isn't most jailbreaking and protections tampering done by | people w/o high school, let alone cs degrees. | eugeniub wrote: | No, you need to know Dijkstra's algorithm in order to tinker | with an OS. /s | emteycz wrote: | Yeah, we learned it as kids at my primary school. Forums and | people there will help a lot if you ask nicely. I guess North | Koreans have to learn it from other people directly, | though... that's probably much harder. Cubans have huge data | libraries shared on USB flashdrives, I wonder if North | Koreans have it too. | aspenmayer wrote: | > Cubans have huge data libraries shared on USB flashdrives | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal | jeroenhd wrote: | Definitely, but those people generally have access to the | Internet. Modern Android security isn't what people used to | jailbreak 30 years ago before the internet. | whimsicalism wrote: | The person inventing the jailbreak method is typically | "classically trained" in CS, notable exceptions like Geohot. | [deleted] | muybasado wrote: | aaron695 wrote: | dragonelite wrote: | Well the world is already fracturing in multiple spheres of | entertainment, cyber and politics. Just waiting for the west to | power up their great firewall with the US clean network | initiative. | MaxLeiter wrote: | If you found this article interesting and are curious for | examples of North Korea's extensive digital surveillance, I | recommend watching "Florian Grunow, Niklaus Schiess: Lifting the | Fog on Red Star OS": https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw | | The depths to which North Korea goes to track and monitor its | citizens is a lot more complex than I thought (and this video is | from 6 years ago, so they've probably only improved their | surveillance) | pueblito wrote: | > The depths to which North Korea goes to track and monitor its | citizens is a lot more complex than I thought (and this video | is from 6 years ago, so they've probably only improved their | surveillance) | | If you think that's wild, get a load of what the NSA and GCHQ | do | erdos4d wrote: | Yeah, I've yet to hear of NK sending submarines to tap | undersea cables or storing essentially all internet traffic | for future decryption efforts. Their little spy OS seems | pretty quaint in comparison. | MaxLeiter wrote: | I expect the Five Eyes to have that level of sophistication | jacquesm wrote: | No need to tap any cables if you're the OEM for the gear | at the endpoints. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | This is probably the real reason why Chinese networking | equipment was banned in the US and other Five Eyes | countries. | dj_mc_merlin wrote: | This was the stated reason too, at least here in Europe. | National security, which is a polite way of saying the | Chinese would tap them. Which they definitely would, | since we would too in their position. | ZoomerCretin wrote: | No, I meant that using Chinese networking equipment was | banned because it wouldn't have a Five Eyes backdoor. | erdos4d wrote: | Yeah, that's kinda what I was saying, they definitely | do:) | dylan604 wrote: | Not sure why this is being down voted as it is a true | story. The underwater recording unit was on display in the | Kremlin (is it still?) with a "Made in USA" plaque attached | for all to see. | | https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/intelligence-coup- | how... | [deleted] | core-utility wrote: | On the same subject, Darknet Diaries podcast did an episode on | PRK and the smuggling of "illegal" media in. It's a good | listen. | | Episode 71: Information Monopoly | | https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/71/ | Kaibeezy wrote: | _USBs are a significant form of sharing information in North | Korea. Many citizens have devices with USB ports and SD card | slots. So for many years, North Korean defectors have | organized efforts to smuggle outside info into North Korea on | USB drives to counter Kim Jong-un's constant propaganda. But | these groups were buying memory devices at cost with limited | resources. Flash Drives For Freedom is a campaign that | travels the world inspiring people to donate their own memory | drives. An initiative launched and managed by the Human | Rights Foundation, Flash Drives for Freedom is significantly | increasing the capacities of these North Korean defector | groups._ | | https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/ | nes350 wrote: | https://archive.ph/hTbRU ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-27 23:00 UTC)