Key facts
- A cyberattack likely caused intermittent internet outages in North Korea this week.
North Korea's internet experienced intermittent outages this week due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack, according to US network monitoring company Kentik. The outages affected over 40 official state-managed websites for a 32-hour period starting Tuesday.
The cyberattack disrupted North Korea's state-managed websites, highlighting the country's vulnerability to external digital threats and its reliance on a tightly controlled internet infrastructure.
A cyberattack likely caused intermittent internet outages in North Korea that took down several of the country's state-managed websites this week, analysis by US network monitoring company Kentik found. North Korea's internet experienced multiple waves of traffic from places such as Vietnam and the Philippines, at the same time as several North Korean websites began experiencing outages over a 32-hour period that began on Tuesday, Doug Madory, Kentik's director of internet analysis, told Reuters on Friday. Kentik's data showed that the sharp spikes in traffic began at around 11 a.m. local time (0201 GMT) on Tuesday. The outages hit more than 40 official sites using the country's .kp domain, including those of the foreign ministry and state news agency KCNA, according to South Korean media. Security experts cited by South Korean media also suggested that North Korea's unstable power supplies could have been a cause. The outage appeared unrelated to global internet issues stemming from vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language later in the week. North Korea's tightly controlled internet network has been paralyzed before; in late 2014, following controversies over a Sony Pictures comedy, North Korea experienced an hours-long complete internet outage.
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