The source code tree for the 2.6.38 Linux kernel as implemented in Red Star OS 3.0

As I work to dig further into the mysteries of Red Star OS, the infamous North Korean Linux distro, one thing that came to me was "where the hell is the source code?" Initially, it didn't look like there was any source code included with Red Star OS 3.0 itself; this would make sense from the perspective of the North Korean government not wanting any secrets of the system internals to get into the hands of anyone else, lest the code gets reverse engineered and people find out its deep, dark secrets.

Welp, they didn't think about two packages included in the Red Star installation DVD, now, did they?

Included on the DVD are two .rpm packages, kernel-devel-2.6.38.8-24.rs3.0.i686.rpm and kernel-headers-2.6.38.8-24.rs3.0.i686.rpm, which contain the kernel source code and headers. I was able to extract the contents of these two packages with rpm2cpio, and here it all is for everyone to enjoy and see!

Reverse engineering is always a fun thing, but in this case, it allows us to see into how an isolated country like North Korea worked on their own, homegrown Linux distro, but one that's filled with tools and daemons that can be used to opress their populace. In 2015, Chaos Computer Club did a presentation on Red Star OS, where they delved into some of its inner workings, lifted the fog on aspects of the system's workings, and showed that despite Korea Computer Company's best attempts to make the system look and seem secure and unbreakable, the system was still easy enough to defang and hack into, and inspiring many others, myself included, to want to dig further into the system to see what else we could find and do with it. And so here we are!

Seeing as how the Linux kernel is GPL 2.0+ licensed, we're going to go with that as well. If I'm in the wrong, please let me know and I'll change it.

This source code is mainly for research and study purposes. If you wish to build and debug this source code, I would recommend keeping it within a sandboxed environment.

I'm usually hanging around on Mastodon; find me at hackers.town!

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And as always, HACK THE PLANET!!