A cyberattack likely caused intermittent internet outages in North Korea this week, disrupting more than 40 state-managed websites, according to analysis by US network monitoring company Kentik.
North Korea’s internet experienced multiple waves of traffic from overseas, including Vietnam and Venezuela, as several websites suffered outages over a 32-hour period beginning on Tuesday, Doug Madory, Kentik’s director of internet analysis, told Reuters on Friday.
“This traffic all started at the same time and it is coming from Vietnam and Venezuela. That’s definitely a DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack,” Madory said.
Kentik’s data showed sharp spikes in traffic beginning at around 11 am local time (0201 GMT) on Tuesday. However, the data did not identify those responsible, and Kentik analysed only part of the traffic directed at North Korea, Madory said.
The outages affected more than 40 official websites using the country’s .kp domain, including those of the foreign ministry and state news agency KCNA, according to South Korean media reports.
South Korean media also cited security experts as saying that North Korea’s unstable electricity supply could have contributed to the disruption. The outage appeared unrelated to wider internet problems linked to the disclosure of vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language later in the week.
