"The V700 consults both “/proc/cpuinfo” to learn the CPU serial number of the device it is on, and a binary file associated with the device file system structure as part of its method for determining its AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) key. It then ignores all of these device-specific items, and reverts back to a static key “87654321” stored in the binary."
<bovril> it collects data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls
I found it out because we sold Allwinner devices and customers complained that after an update the MAC address changed. The MAC address is set at boot time, but the algorithm used was different in the binaries we got from Allwinner, and the source we used for compiling the update. They do have a reputation for not taking GPL too seriously.
I could imagine in this case, the source-code version of libcdx_stream was supposed to give the proper machine ID that Allwinner uses in other places, but somebody sloppily patched it out for their encryption scheme.
Especially considering the devices would be sold to strangers and it's quite unlikely the harddrive would make it into the hands of someone without access to the paired system.
I suppose the re-encrypting could just be a second key, but still would require processing that is not worth anyone's time.
A quick google just now does tell me there are NKers who travel overseas for work or studies..
I recall reading something along the lines of their being tens of thousands of North Koreans working in Russia, more or less in slavery, doing things like construction where the work is so dangerous that even the locals won't pick it up.
I believe it was the PS3 that was hacked to get Sony's private key because the ECDSA algorithms random factor 'k' always picked 4.