An American hacker 'in his pyjamas' has taken down North Korea 's internet in revenge for a cyber attack carried out against...
An American hacker 'in his pyjamas' has taken down North Korea's internet in revenge for a cyber attack carried out against him by Pyongyang.
The hacker, who has been named only as P4x, launched repeated 'distributed denial of service' (DDoS) attacks against the communist state, crippling the country's few government-operated public-access websites and slowing email traffic.
DDoS attacks flood a system with fake traffic, consuming available bandwidth and limiting processing capacity of servers so that a website becomes unavailable.
An American hacker 'in his pyjamas' has taken down North Korea's internet in revenge for a cyber attack carried out against him. Pictured: A hacker at a laptop (stock image)
In the isolationist state, just a small number of trusted officials and academics are permitted to use the World Wide Web. At the same time, only a small number of North Korean websites are connected to the wider global internet.
These include state airline Air Koryo and Naenara - the official web portal of the North Korean government - which spreads state news and propaganda on behalf of the Communist Party, headed by Kim Jong Un.
Over the last two weeks, these websites have come under a sustained attack from P4x, even tricking observers of North Korean activity into believing the country was facing cyber attacks from a Western power.
Experts suspected the hacks were being done in response to a recent spate of missile tests that have been carried out by Pyongyang, of which there have been six in recent weeks, raising alarm bells in the region and drawing condemnation.
But according to Wired Magazine, the DDoS attacks were not the work of the intelligence agencies of any of the world's big players.
Instead, 'one American man in a T-shirt, pyjama pants and slippers, sitting in his living room night after night, watching Alien movies and eating spicy corn snacks,' was responsible, the magazine wrote, 'periodically walking over to his home office to check on the progress of the programs he was running to disrupt the internet of an entire country.'
In the isolationist state ruled by Kim Jong Un (pictured) , just a small number of trusted officials and academics are permitted to use the World Wide Web. At the same time, only a small number of North Korean websites are connected to the wider global internet.
While an increasing number of North Korean citizens have been given access to a domestic 'intranet' of websites closed off from the rest of the World Wide Web, the country is otherwise one of the world's least digitally connected countries.
P4x told Wired he was able to exploit vulnerabilities in North Korea's out-of-date operating systems, and launch his attacks from the comfort of his own home.
'It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don't see we have teeth, it's just going to keep coming,' he told the publication. 'I want them to understand that if you come at us, it means some of your infrastructure is going down for a while.'
He explained that his cyber attacks on the state came after he himself was unsuccessfully targeted by Pyongyang, with DPK hackers attempting to break into his own personal network a year ago to get access to his hacking technology.
He was able to catch the breach, open the file the hackers used in an attempt to gain access to his network with a virtual computer (thus isolating the breach), and study it himself. He found the hack had been launched, to his surprise, from North Korea.
He added that he reported the incident to American authorities such as the FBI, but was ignored. 'If no one's going to help me, I'm going to help myself,' he said.
North Korean hackers are often found to be behind security breaches worldwide, as Pyongyang has been stepping up its cybercrime activities.
Experts suspected the hacks were being done in response to a recent spate of missile tests being carried out by Pyongyang, of which there have been six in recent weeks, raising alarm bells in the region and drawing condemnation. But infact it was just one man at home
The United Nations has reported 35 countries have been targeted by hackers in the country, that have launched numerous attacks on financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges - earning an estimated $2 billion.
In 2016, an attempt was partially successful in stealing $1 billion from the Bangladesh central bank.
In January 2021, a team of North Korean computer hackers used a fake website to hack other hackers, Google revealed.
Google said at the time the Pyongyang-backed hackers lured computer security researchers to a blog site about hacking using fake social media profiles and then used clandestine methods to infect their computers in order to extract information.
The search engine giant said the scheme, which involved hacking Windows and Google Chrome, was successful at times, but didn't specify the kind of information that was compromised.
Experts say the attacks reflect North Korean efforts to improve its cyber skills and be able to breach widely used computer products, such as the Chrome internet browser and the Windows 10 operating system.
In 2017, North Korea was blamed after a huge ransomware virus called WannaCry swept through 150 countries and hit at least 200,000 targets, from Australian railways to French car plants, all of whose computer systems suddenly froze, replaced by ransom demands to be paid in Bitcoin.
The most alarming target, however, was Britain's NHS, where some 600 organisations within it were affected.
Thankfully nobody died, but that may be only because Marcus Hutchins, a 22-year-old English hacker and cyber security researcher sitting in his bedroom at his parents' home in Devon, managed to activate a 'kill switch', preventing further computers from becoming infected.
Pictured: Kim Jong Un is pictured in a recent North Korean documentary
The Government said the attack cost the NHS £92 million, with 19,000 appointments cancelled.
WannaCry wasn't the first major cyber raid conducted by North Korea.
In 2014, the world's biggest entertainment giant, Sony, was brought to its knees, causing huge embarrassment in Hollywood as thousands of internal emails were made public.
Its chairman, Amy Pascal, lost her job after being caught suggesting that President Obama would naturally be keen on films about slavery.
Also in 2014, British TV production company Mammoth Screen was targeted by the North Koreans after Channel 4 announced it was making Opposite Number, a 'bold and provocative' drama series about a British scientist taken prisoner in North Korea.
Pyongyang described it as a 'slanderous farce'. Its hackers caused no real damage, but huge alarm at the company. (The series was later shelved, reportedly over funding issues.)
In early 2015, North Korea's hackers struck again, this time targeting Bangladesh's central bank, swindling it out of more than $100 million.
In 2016, South Korea was humiliated when Pyongyang even managed to hack its top-secret plans for what to do if they went to war, which included assassinating Kim Jong-un.
In April 2021, Jeremy Fleming, head of GCHQ, warned that the West is faced with a 'moment of reckoning' over technology and security, as Britain faces rivals in cyberspace 'who don't share our values or follow the rules'.
Nowhere fits that description better than North Korea.
North Korea is believed to be behind the Wannacry ransomware virus, which crippled the NHS computer system in 2017
Meanwhile, Britain, France and Germany on Wednesday condemned a battery of 'provocative' missile tests by North Korea and urged it to comply with UN resolutions ahead of Security Council talks.
'We strongly condemn these provocative actions, which undermine regional as well as international peace and security and are in clear violation of multiple unanimously adopted UN Security Council resolutions,' the European powers said in a joint statement.
The statement came as the United States requested an emergency meeting for Thursday of the UN Security Council, after North Korea launched its most powerful missile since 2017 last weekend.
North Korea has now conducted six ballistic missile tests since the start of the year, and is threatening to escalate its testing, the European countries said.
'Such activity is a matter of grave concern and will receive a united response,' their foreign ministries said.
'We call on the DPRK (North Korea) to implement the decisions of the Security Council in full, to accept the repeated offers of dialogue put forward by the United States and to take concrete actions towards the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles programmes.'
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