I recently got the opportunity to understand what was going on with a Tianchi android KTV console with north korean content loaded on it. A description of the encryption and evolution of DRM protections associated with the device is published on the North Korea Tech blog.
Tag: nk
NextGen Korea Scholars
I had the incredible opportunity to spend the end of last week in Washington DC with the CSIS NextGen Scholars program meeting the US policy makers who define the US policy towards the DPRK. It was fascinating to see the process has been put in place for weighing the different factors that go into these… Continue reading NextGen Korea Scholars
NextGen Scholar
Excited to be included in the 2018 class of CSIS NextGen Scholars.
DPRK Consumer Technology
The video from the talk I gave on how to get more public visibility into DPRK consumer technology is now online. Slides for the talk are available here.
34C3
I’m very excited to have two talks at CCC at the end of the month. The bulk of accepted talks can be seen and voted on at the CCC “halfnarp”. The first talk is on the Internet in Cuba. It expands upon the recent talk I presented at IMC last month, to provide additional color… Continue reading 34C3
PUST in the news
The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) has shown up in a recent New York Times article, and I’m mentioned at the end. A couple notes on the article: While the school may have 250 acres if the affiliated cooperative farms are included, the actual campus is much smaller, with ~10 buildings built around… Continue reading PUST in the news
Koryolink Simulator
When I was in Pyongyang a few years ago and had access to a cell phone, I recorded a bunch of the prerecorded messages that you hear when dialing or mis-dialing numbers. I found them to be an interesting glimpse into the view of technology seen in that corner of the world, and helpfully they… Continue reading Koryolink Simulator
Thoughts on Wulim
One of the exciting developments at CCC last month was a talk discussing the copy protection features in the Wulim tablet produced by the Pyongyang Information Center. This post is an attempt to reconcile the features they describe with my experience with devices around Pyongyang and provide some additional context of the environment the device… Continue reading Thoughts on Wulim
Contextualizing RedStar OS
At the 2015 Chaos Communication Congress, Florian and Niklaus presented an analysis of Red Star OS 3.0, the system which leaked online a year ago. In their talk they provide technical backing for several observations about the system which have gained some press attention. The first is that the Operating System is designed without obvious… Continue reading Contextualizing RedStar OS
3rd International conference of PUST
I returned to PUST this fall just in time for ICOPUST3, a bi-annual conference hosted by the university and one of the few instances of international academic engagement performed by the university. A bit of background: I spoke on my research at ICOPUST2, the previous instance of this conference held two years ago, and my… Continue reading 3rd International conference of PUST