Reply to post: A serious question...

North Korean operating system is a surveillance state's tour de force

Shadow Systems

A serious question...

What's to stop an industrious, ingenious, talented, & bored hacker group to neuter the official OS into something that LOOKS like the official one but doesn't ACT like it?

What's to stop someone from neutering the OS (so it doesn't know it's been altered; so it doesn't append the data trail to files; so it doesn't scan/delete files, etc) and go around with the altered OS on LiveUSB to every internet cafe, library with a computer, or any personal/public machine they can find, reboot to the Live media, install the new OS, and let it overwrite the old one?

Imagine all the "fun" the North Korean government would have in trying to play an infinite game of Whack-A-Mole with all the script kiddy "hackers" that wandered around town with LiveUSB copies of the new OS, installing it everywhere they went, leaving copies for others to find & utilize, and generally wrecking havoc for the Powers That Be.

I know the NK government has tried to lock it down to be impregnable/unchangeable by mere mortals, but anything one person can code, another person can tweak with enough time, motivation, & resources.

So what's to keep anti-government hackers from tweaking the official OS into something that merely looks official, replacing all the official copies they encounter, and spreading the ability for the proverbial Joe Public to do the same?

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