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All nuclear weapons, once obtained, are easily deployed by third parties.
A nuclear weapon is basically the payload (the bomb) and the delivery system (the missile), but the bomb itself is very easily deployable by third parties. For example, a B61 nuclear bomb, the primary gravity nuclear bomb maintained for NATO purposes, is less than 12 feet long and (~3.53 m) long, and weighs only 700 pounds (320 kg). This could easily fit inside a basic cargo truck or shipping container, especially if you cut off the unnecessary parts of the casing.
First-generation nuclear weapons (like the WW2 era weapons) were bulkier, but even the Little Boy used in Hiroshima was 'only' 9,700 lbs. That's not even a capacity cargo container track.
In short, if you can get the bomb, and get the bomb to a shipping container, you can deploy a nuclear weapon. If you can then get that shipping container contents onto a ship (or even just a boat), you can deploy it to any major port in the world.
You don't need the default arming codes to make use of a nuclear weapon. The idea that nuclear weapons become innert without the right code is basically Holywood and security theater.
All an arming code for a nuclear is, is the software password to use the pre-installed software. However, the nuclear weapon is fundamentally an analog device of 'conventional explosive to move catalyst to trigger nuclear chain reaction', and the software doesn't actually do anything past the triggering the conventional explosive point. (Rather, the software is about when the conventional explosive triggers, often by being tied to sensors for airmovement and altitidue that a ground-based device doesn't care about.) The bomb goes boom when the internal trigger explosion is triggered, regardless of what software is used or if any software is used. The 'you need the right password or the bomb goes innert' is really just the conventional-explosive trigger-control software borking itself and needing to be replaced. The bomb itself is still 'fine', the UI panel just isn't working.
Non-state actors, or even state actors who steal another side's bomb, just need to replace the software control system for the initial trigger, and controlled demolitions are an extremely basic technology in the civil engineering sector around the world. There are bomb designs where a jurry-rig trigger software may be less efficient- such as an implosion device that's not quite synchronous- but this isn't 'you don't get an explosion,' but rather 'the explosion is smaller than it could have been, but is still a nuclear explosion.' And land-based devices were always going to be smaller just due to being based on the land rather than airburst.
In short, all the arming code system really means for a loose nuke is that there's a period of time between when a deployable nuke is captured, and when it can be armed and trigger via replacement software. That could be days or weeks... but depending on how the nuke is obtained, it could be days or weeks before the state knows to start looking, or where, by which point a shipping container can possibly be on another continent.
I'm not in a position to know for sure what the setup is on any particular nation's nuclear devices (and of course if I was I sure wouldn't post about it on a public internet forum), but from what I've heard, it's entirely possible to put in place arming codes that are not trivial to circumvent.
Implosion devices depend on extremely precise timing between all of the charges placed around the core. In early devices, this was kept simple by having the whole thing be spherical and all of the wires be exactly the same length connecting the conventional detonators to a single power source. There's no reason that needs to be the case though. Varying the wire lengths, detonator positions, core shape etc introduces complex timing requirements that might only be known by the software, or possibly even encoded into the arming code.
It's also my understanding that modern high-yield devices have more complex detonation chains, requiring mini-accelerators to be turned on, other gasses to be dispensed, etc at just the right time. So it's probably not trivial to get around coding issues like that without being a nuclear engineer yourself. At least, as long as the organization designing it wants to make it so and cares enough to make sure it's actually effective.
'Actually effective' is the load-bearing term here, because the effect of using a nuclear weapon in the current era isn't actually the degree of damage, but the nature. Fat Man and Little Boy were not 'actually effective' nukes by the standards which make extremely precise timing and more complex systems important to effectiveness. Fat Man and Little Boy were small, inefficient, and wasteful. They were also effective politically, which is what matters, and which is what will matter for the effects that a ground-based rather than air-burst nuclear weapon is going for.
The maximum effectiveness of the bomb on a technical efficiency ground (explosiveness per amount of material) is secondary to the scary nuke factor success and the geopolitical implications that would be the target motive. Even nuclear 'fizzle' explosions would be considered historic successes, despite being a tiny fraction of the potential of an 'actually effective' bomb. The value of the nuclear demonstration is the fact that it is nuclear, that the target wasn't able to stop you, and that no one knows if you can do so again.
No one's going to get hit with a 12% technical effectiveness nuclear detonation and go 'ha, those losers couldn't even do the trigger detonations better!'
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I think that adding anti-tampering devices to nukes is feasible. If tampering is detected (for example if the internal pressure changes), a nuke could disable itself by selectively firing a few of the explosives, spreading the fissile material over a few meters. Scraping off that material and building a nuke from it is doable but much harder than just replacing some software. (Of course, I would go for a few-kiloton fizzle in the event of tampering.)
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