Report suggests North Korea has its own encryption system

By Rudy Takala

 

North Korea has developed its own system of encryption, according to two researchers who presented their findings at a conference on Sunday.  "(Late leader) Kim Jong Il said North Korea should develop a system of their own," German IT researcher Florian Grunow told Reuters before the presentation, delivered at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg. "This is what they've done.".........As part of its surveillance regime, the Red Star OS also places a unique watermark on every document or media file on a system connected to it, allowing every file to be traced to its origin. "It's definitely privacy invading, it's not transparent to the user," Grunow said. "It's done stealthily, and touches files you haven't even opened.".......Lawmakers in the United States have spent the last several months debating whether American companies like Apple should be required to install "backdoors" in their encryption systems. Advocates of such backdoors believe they would help intelligence officials to monitor criminal activity. Opponents have suggested that such laws would make U.S. citizens more vulnerable while doing nothing to deter alternatives for encryption abroad. The latter is an argument that the report on North Korea is likely to buoy......To Read More.....