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North Korean Internet Is Down
First time accepted submitter opentunings writes "Engadget and many others are reporting that North Korea's external Internet access is down. No information yet regrading whether anyone's taking responsibility. From the NYT: "Doug Madory, the director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, an Internet performance management company, said that North Korean Internet access first became unstable late Friday. The situation worsened over the weekend, and by Monday, North Korea’s Internet was completely offline. 'Their networks are under duress,' Mr. Madory said. 'This is consistent with a DDoS attack on their routers,' he said, referring to a distributed denial of service attack, in which attackers flood a network with traffic until it collapses under the load."
Fallout 2 or Fallout 3? This will make a very big difference in who will get angry.
Perhaps it is the PRC giving Jong Uno a little spanking...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I didn't catch any stories like that. Why is China mad at them this time?
Sony is worth more than NK though, so not really.
You act as if the common North Korean citizen has internet access.
Sony is bigger than many countries.
IF they are the perpetrators of the hack (seeing as they're claiming they were framed) and IF the U.S. is responsible for this attack (I seem to recall Anonymous threatening to do just such a thing just yesterday, right?) then the level of retribution is not to balance out the corporate hack but rather the threats made toward civilian targets if the movie were to be released.
The hammer of US reaction to any threats of terrorism predictably treats everything as a nail.
That being said I'm pretty at least one of my parentheticals is right... you can guess which one.
The blame?
The guy who tripped over the modem's power cord? There can't be that much blame to go around when a network that size drops dead.
No, they're not. Sony's annual revenue is $64.7 billion USD. North Korea's GDP is $12.4 billion USD. Sony's market capitalization is also larger than North Korea's entire economy. The drop in Sony's stock value after the hack was roughly a quarter of North Korea's GDP, although the stock has since recovered somewhat.
Sony is far larger than North Korea, economically.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The US asked China to interfere with NK's ability to conduct cyber attacks. Maybe they agreed.
.: Semper Absurda
If the US an Ally, South Korea perhaps, are responsible this is more likely to be a result of the North started targeting Nuclear reactors in the South yesterday, than anything to do with Sony.
The irony here, is that it that it looks like hacktivists were responsible for the initial Sony attacks, not the DPRK.
You start with this
Why am I reminded of petulant children squabbling over who gets to pat the new puppy?
and then start complaining about not getting jetpacks, flying cars and a holiday trip on the moon all lined up for Christmas
They keep us from watching a movie nobody wanted to see, and we cut off Kim Jung's pr0n.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Someone picked up the phone, that's all.
I didn't catch any stories like that. Why is China mad at them this time?
You've got it backwards. China has stated that they think the US Government's claim that NK was behind the Sony hack is bogus and lacking in facts. Since NK's internet routes through China, then the implied source (the US Government, probably the NSA) is going through Chinese servers to whack NK's internet, which will piss them off. Personally I doubt it's the US, I bet it's some hacker group like an Anonymous faction, but everyone will think it's the US.
China hates North Korea as much as everyone else. They support them because they're a convenient tool for Chinese diplomacy with the US; every so often the DPRK goes nuts and threatens to blow up South Korea, and the US gets all riled up because we've never officially stopped being at war with them (just a 60 year cease fire). Then China gets to step in and provide the peaceful solution and portrays Washington as a bunch of warmongering fools bullying smaller nations. This is just another iteration of the same tired old game going on the Northeast Pacific.
Now is the time at Sprockets when Kim Jon Un jumps up and down angrily, threatens a fiery death to all the enemies of the glorious republic, and lobs some shells and missiles into the Sea of Japan.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
The U.S. by the look of things. I think it'd be a bit heavy-handed to call it a proportional response though as Sony is a lot smaller than a country.
Physically perhaps but in terms of internet presence I would doubt it. As a non-American I'd think this was an entirely appropriate response if it were the US. It has the beauty of being non-violent, extremely humiliating and very effective at preventing them from engaging in further cyberattacks. This should send such a clear message that hopefully even their insane government can understand it. Indeed if anything it seems so well thought out and proportionate that it seems unlikely to be the US government given their previous record.
Um...politics and warmongering is the price we have to pay for not having a global dictatorship. If you have large groups of people who disagree with each other there needs to be a method of getting things done while allowing for the representation, at least to some degree, of these disparate groups. Would you prefer to have the world run by dictator who thinks like you (or perhaps you yourself would like to be the dictator) so you can advance to the world toward what you think is best, irregardless of what others want?
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Anyone on /. who does not know what ddos means should be condemned to a lifetime of reading DOS boot disks in binary with a plastic monacle.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The US won't defend Americans in the USA (how many unarmed black men were killed by cops this year? How many black men were lynched this year?), but will happily start a war to defend the Right of Japan to make profit in the USA.
Actually, the police kill more white people then black people.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Sorry, figure corrections (I got my info from http://www.marketwatch.com/inv..., which lists figures in yen):
$4,799B - North Korean GDP 2014
$7,770B - Sony Gross Sales/Revenue 2014
$2,280B - Sony Gross Income 2014
Sony is only really worth 1.6 North Koreas.
It would be fairly amusing if the next world war was started over a film of dubious quality.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The blame?
I imagine Bush.
decimate their attackers.
And what about the other 90%?
...in other news, kim jong un now reportedly threatening verizon customer services with ground attack after being on hold for 90 minutes...
Why are you perfectly fine with the number of black on black murders, why do you single out black men killed by cops and lynchings?
Surely more blacks are killed by other blacks than both groups mentioned combined but let's not let facts get in the way of your racist dogma.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
What part of "annual revenue" did you not understand?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
and very effective at preventing them from engaging in further cyberattacks.
Probably not so much. It's long been suspected that much of North Korea's cyberwarfare activity is actually based out of China, which is why the U.S. asked China for help shutting them down. I'm going to guess that this is because it's hard to get sufficient bandwidth to operate a cyberwarfare division in North Korea, and because North Korea's limited connectivity makes it too easy to shut down and isolate a team based in North Korea in precisely the scenario we are seeing here.
And North Korea can't be doing this without China's cooperation. China has one of the world's most advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, up there with other cyber-superpowers like U.S., Russia, and Israel, and they closely monitor their internet. If North Korean agents are using China as a staging ground to attack South Korea and the United States, China knows about it and is turning a blind eye.
I haven't seen mention of it on any actual news sites yet, but there's been some #tangodown messages from social media accounts supposedly controlled by Lizard Squad that are at the very least worth raising an eyebrow at. Since massive DDoS attacks have been their signature move against all of their high-profile targets (Sony, Microsoft, Blizzard, etc), which is what's happening to these routers rather then an actual sophisticated attack, and I'm currently looking at a facebook account of theirs that makes mention of an impending #tangodown that was posted a good 48 hours before North Korea went offline, I'd say this is just as likely if not even more likely then some kind of state-sponsored retaliation by the CIA/NSA/FBI/whatever.
Dictatorships that control their subjects' access to information like to have all Internet connections in their country pass through a single choke point so that they can maintain control. I once visited Saudi Arabia and met the guy responsible for all Internet traffic in and out of the country -- through a single link with a single backup.
This is good if you want to give your people only the access you want them to have, and to block everything else. At the same time, it means your whole country can be knocked offline by a single attack, which seems to be the problem N. Korea is experiencing. Imagine trying to knock the entire U.S. offline! It couldn't be done.
Cuba, OTOH.... well, that one may change soon. But N. Korea? Probably not, although I wish it would. A far more miserable place than Cuba has ever been.
They are the ones beating the other 10% to death. Duh.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Fuzzy foreigners are confused regarding . vs ,
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The US force is a tripwire to draw the US into the conflict. That's why we are there. The US force is tiny and not sufficient to do anything useful except get overwhelmed. But when US bodies start showing up on newscasts, the DPRK is toast
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Did they try turning North Korea off and then back on again?
Have gnu, will travel.
Not such a bad idea... just look at what Lee Kwan Yew did for Singapore -- turned it from a backwards island state into one of the world's most sophisticated, modern countries with low tax rates and enviable prosperity.
Benevolent dictators are sometimes a whole lot better than corrupt (faux) democracies controlled by the movie and defense industries behind the scenes... don't you think?
Who gives a damn if you get caned for chewing gum anyway :-)
Likely a DDOS from Anonymous....
It would be interesting if the DPRK *IS* responsible for the Sony hack.... now.... Sony is twice as big as the DPRK from a financial standpoint. Can Sony hire a bunch of mercenaries to retaliate or nuke the DPRK and call it self defense? If corporations are people and people have a right to defend themselves with weapons if necessary..... is a corporate army in the US legal?
He acts as if the common North Korean citizen is permitted knowledge of the internet, instead of just advanced CS students who have proven themselves indoctrinated sufficiently.
It's so easy to underestimate what such a government can do with such an ancient moral code and modern access to propaganda. The North Korean people aren't like "put yourself in their position". They have been systematically denied knowledge and education that would permit them to ask "Why don't we have the freedom to access the internet". They don't understand "freedom", they don't know that there is an "internet", and in many cases their definition of "we" will be substantially alien as well. Education is huge, and they have plenty over there- just of the wrong kind.
Protip: The North Korean media reports on US troops attacking North Korean soil and being repelled. The overwhelming majority of North Koreans believe that not only is the US at war with North Korea, but that North Korea is winning a defensive war lasting decades. That's the literal truth. That's how successful the Juche zealots have been. Internet access? Goodness, lol.
...the US gets all riled up because we've never officially stopped being at war with them (just a 60 year cease fire).
This is not true. The US has never been at war with North Korea, because Truman did not officially declare war; he acted without the consent of Congress.
South Korea, on the other hand, is still technically at war with North Korea.
It could be Sony itself. Sony has already admitted to doing Denial of Services Attacks against its enemies, whether those enemies are located in the United States, Europe, Russia, or anywhere else in the World.
Sony really doesn't care about collateral damage, nor national boundaries.
Well, it is an Intranet now...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Most of the guards on the North side looked bored and didn't care particularly what you did. In contrast, the guards on the South side look like they will kill you for looking in the wrong direction.
I think that might more accurately illustrate which side suspects the other might try to invade.
Ok, all of what? 2 people are offline now?
The two that matter, yes.
Well, yeah, the NorKs claim, "We didn't do it!"
But they're also saying, "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!"
So....
Wait, where's the source for that second quote? DPRK's claim is "We didn't do it." Guardians of Peace's claim is "If you don't do what we want, we'll do it again!" I haven't heard an admission from the north that they are GOP, or a duplication of the rhetoric that GOP said.
Even Bin Laden is on camera admitting to 9/11. NK hasn't gotten that far yet.
It kind of begs the question about what the US is still doing in South Korea anyhow. South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense. There is no doubt that the South Koreans can adequately defend themselves against any potential "invasion" from the North. There is no reason for the US to be there. The constant presence of US marines on the DMZ make the North Koreans nervous that the South will invade them.
One of the running half-jokes amongst the US troops and marines in South Korea is their primary purpose is to keep the South Korean army in the south, not the other way around. The US influence keeps the south somewhat calm, and acts as a deterrent to the north.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
On the other hand North Korea is a military power including nuclear weapons. Sony however has a remake of Annie which is expected to clean up at the next Razzies. Quite frankly I'm more afraid off Sony.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I have quite a bit of extra unused CPU time. Where do I sign up to donate to such a DOS strategy?
With me its not political. I just can't stand the haircut, so I'd like to vote no.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21636033-united-states-needs-overhaul-its-law-enforcement-system-americas-police-trial:
"Roughly 29% of Americans shot by the police are black, but so are about 42% of cop killers whose race is known."
So, considering the black population is ~15%, then cops shoot blacks at about 2x their representation.
Then again, blacks kill cops at nearly 3x their representation.
Sounds like the cops need to work harder, they should be killing at least 15% more black young men to represent the threat posed by them....
To bring this thread to its logical conclusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Or because black people know that they are twice as likely to be shot than a white person, they shoot back. The unarmed dead blacks are because the cops shoot first many of the times.
That and when a cop is shot, the suspect is always black, until proven otherwise. Also, with only 46 cops shot dead, your numbers work out to 133 Black people killed by cops, and 19 cops killed by black people. So black people need to kill another 115 cops to cover the difference.
Learn to love Alaska
By sheer coincidence, Best Korea's IT chief just got a shiny CD in the post of Ray Charles' Friendship album and played it just prior to the internet going down.
So is Germany, and the US has 39,000 troops there. So is Japan, and the US has 50,000 troops there. Hell, there are 11,000 US troops in Italy.
So there are 29,000 US troops in South Korea, which unlike those countries named above has a border with a fully militarized raving psychotic insane evil totalitarian state who viciously threatens South Korea constantly. The capital of South Korea, with a population of 10 million, lies only 50 km from the border and could be overrun and decimated within hours, regardless of whether or not the psychotics ultimately win the conflict.
Is any of this difficult to understand?
China wouldn't need to DDoS North Korea's internet link
They do, if they want to have plausible deniability.
Absolutely correct. Blacks are statistically several times more likely to be shot by police than are whites. Concerning ages 15-19, the ratio is about 20 times more likely. But what you conveniently overlook is that blacks are FAR more likely to be murdered by other blacks than by police (many of which are themselves black). We are talking many scores of times more likely.
Could it just POSSIBLY be that blacks are far more likely than whites to be engaged in street activities that are begging to attract police attention? And that, once confronted, just maybe they might be far more threatening - as in, likely to whip out a handgun or rush the officer?
Hey, it's just a question, though I strongly suspect what the answer is. And yes, it leads directly to other questions about disadvantaged groups and vicious circles of crime and despair.
One of the most impressive dramas I ever saw dealing with blacks, antagonism between blacks and cops, and disillusionment of black cops was an episode of Dragnet from 1968 or 1969 showing the situation after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. It showed the raw hurt and grievances, but also it ended on a positive and uplifting note that mirrors my own hopes. On the other hand, every single one of the issues presented remains absolutely topical to this day. You take the afros and 60s cars out of that episode and it could have been made yesterday.
Maybe your clues are wrong.
North Korea faces famine: 'Tell the world we are starving'
More than a decade after North Korea was struck by a famine that killed up to a million people, the country's poorest are once again facing starvation, reports Peter Foster in Yanji
Pyongyang’s Hunger Games
... during the great famine of the 1990s, between 600,000 and 2.5 million people died of hunger. According to the commission’s report, the North Korean regime, then headed by Kim Jong-il, obstructed the delivery of aid to the hungriest regions until 1997, and punished those who tried to earn, buy, steal or smuggle in enough food to survive. The regime was “well aware of the country’s deteriorating food situation” as it stocked airfields, reactors and palaces, rather than food stores.
According to one expert witness testimonial before the commission, the North Korean regime, at the height of the famine, could have closed its food gap by importing between $100 and $200 million worth of food each year, which is just 1 to 2 percent of its national income. Yet rather than using foreign food aid to supplement its own commercial food imports, the commission found that Kim Jong-il used aid “as a substitute for” them, cutting back on commercial food imports when more aid arrived. By contrast, the State Department estimates that in 1997, at the peak of the famine, North Korea’s annual military budget was $6 billion.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense.
Part of the point is that North Korea can't "invade" South Korea, but could destroy it. The US is there to enforce MAD. If NK attacks SK, SK will lose, but so will NK. That is the point. It's like a nuclear deterrent.
Learn to love Alaska
It kind of begs the question about what the US is still doing in South Korea anyhow. South Korea is a rich country. They can afford their own defense, but its convenient for them for Uncle Sam to pick up the tab. I have stood on the North side of the DMZ and it is clear that the US is just a thorn in the situation making everybody tense. There is no doubt that the South Koreans can adequately defend themselves against any potential "invasion" from the North. There is no reason for the US to be there. The constant presence of US marines on the DMZ make the North Koreans nervous that the South will invade them.
Alright troll, you sucked me in.
1. You've been on the North side of the DMZ looking south, and from your vantage point three feet from the border in peace village...it was clear to you that the US is a thorn in the situation? SERIOUSLY?!? You deduced all that at a glance?
2. I'm going to presume you've never been to North Korea, and educate you about a few things.
a.) First and Foremost, that's the U.S Army at the DMZ, not the Marines. Specifically, the 8th Army. The infantry units there come from the 2ID, (2nd Infantry Division), with Republic of Korea attachments (referred to as ROKs). Tank support comes from the 72nd armor regiment, artillery support from...you get the picture. Army units. Not Navy (marine) units.
b.) There are an estimated 13,000 - 17,000 artillery pieces on the border, pointed at Seoul, which happens to be ~120 miles away from Pyongyang.
c.) Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.
d.) If the US was not present, a war between North and South Korea would last 2-3 hours and would look like this:
d1.) Hostilities ensue.
d2.) Within the first hour, North Korea has obliterated most of South Korea's population centers.
d3.) South Korea retaliates with nuclear force, and levels Pyongyang.
d4.) Other stuff, largely secondary given that North and South Korea are largely depopulated.
e.) The presence of the U.S - TODAY - is not as relevant as 3/5/10 years ago. However, U.S. foreign policy takes an incredible length of time to change.
f.) North Korean guards on the border to not "look bored." The half cant of their eyes is because of their asian heritage. Both North and South Korean guards on the DMZ treat it like a ceremonial position - like being in the 3rd Infantry in D.C. stationed at Ft. Myer doing military funerals, or Tomb of the Unknown, or ceremonial duties.
I *have* been to North Korea. I've been to Kijong-dong, and I *have* stood on the North Korean side of the border at the DMZ. If you'd like to see what it *really* looks like there, google it. Google, "Korean DMZ." You'll see pictures of guards on both ends of the border standing at perfect attention.
You'd think they would do something more sophisticated than a DDOS though. This is likely some Anonymous-esque group striking out on their own. If a big state actor is going to launch an attack, it's going to be a slow and low torpedo that doesn't blow up until it's in a position to do maximum damage, like the Sony attack, or Stuxnet.
Is NK still off the net? About a half hour ago I had no trouble reaching the sites www.kcna.kp - 175.45.177.74 / 175.45.176.71 naenara.com.kp - 175.45.176.67 / 175.45.177.77 According to https://www.northkoreatech.org..., both sites are physically hosted inside North Korea. I see that both are in the 175.45.176.0/22 block that whois says is assigned to North Korea, and traceroute shows an extra latency (satellite hop?) for that network past China. Is that their only net block? A /22 is 1024 addresses, which I keep hearing is the total number for the entire country.
Case in point, the troops there call themselves "speed bumps." They know their job in case of a N. Korean attack is to get overrun and die, so the U.S. populace will get all outraged and back a full reprisal in S. Korea's defense.
And to answer OP, the idea is that the outcome of a war between N. Korea and S. Korea has enough uncertainty that some loony of a N. Korean leader may actually try it. But the outcome of a war between N. Korea and the U.S. is so obvious that no N. Korean leader would try it. (Well, no sane N. Korean leader. I'm starting to have my doubts about how much sanity is left after 60 years of indoctrination about how "N. Korea drove the U.S. out" of half the peninsula.) If you talk with S. Koreans, most of them don't exactly like U.S. troops being there, but are willing to tolerate it for this tangible deterrence factor.
But couldn't the UN do something? When the original 1950 "police action" in Korea was authorized by the UN security council, China's vote was controlled by Taiwan, and the Soviet Union happened to be boycotting the UN to try to get that vote transferred to mainland China. Let's just say that if a similar situation should arise, there's considerable uncertainty about getting anything more than a strongly worded statement from the UN.
... Dragnet from 1968 or 1969 showing the situation after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. ... You take the afros and 60s cars out of that episode and it could have been made yesterday.
Except Michael Brown was no Martin Luther King. King would have been appalled by the circumstances into which Brown's family launched him through neglect of his character. King would have been disgusted by Brown, who spend the morning smoking dope, robbing a convenience store to get more supplies, and then assaulting a cop. King would likewise have been disgusted by people chanting in the streets about things that didn't happen, outraged by their willingness to destroy people's property and burn down their neighborhood businesses, or shout in large organized groups about wanting to see dead cops NOW!
No, things are very different now than they were even 20 years ago. Worse, when it comes to that sort of thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
29,500 US service men and women as of 2014 is not tiny. That is more then Bush sent on invasion in the first year to Afghanistan or Iraq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... That is more then enough to fight, and within days the US air force in japan (11,000+ US airmen/women) would flatten NK and the US army/marines/navy (39,000+ United states sons and daughters) in japan would be readying to back up south korea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... Don't act like we don't have a huge presence in the area.
"Care to point to the source"
Haha is this wikipedia? I'm telling you things you can google, not applying for a job as your bitch.
You know that statement about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof?
Well, ordinary claims just need you to use a search engine, or even just start on wikipedia. You don't get to play skeptic with life, assuming that before you change your precious worldview something has to be tied up and cited. You have the power to google it your goddamned self.
But, fuck it. I'm on vacation.
You can find a TON of first hand accounts of crazy fucking bullshit in North Korea. Here's some who talk on social media after having been there as a tourist:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
Here's one on social media who mentions having taught there, and brings up the "repelled incursions" I referred to, in addition to crazier shit involving netting on cars:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
Also you can find firsthand accounts all over, not only from social media: ..but from other media as well
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.cracked.com/article...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.dailylife.com.au/li...
Essentially ALL of these mention that the internet is pretty well shut down and only the North Korean fake version is available- in Pyongyang. You know, their BIG CITY.
Here's a wikipedia link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Some quotes:
"As of late 2014 there are 1,024 IP addresses in the country."
"Despite the incident, many citizens of North Korea may be oblivious to the existence of the internet."
http://qz.com/315969/in-north-...
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/2...
"Nearly all of the country's Internet traffic is routed through China. Firms that monitor that traffic say it is comparable to only about 1,000 high-speed homes in the United States."
I'd like to repeat my earlier point, however:
You don't need to source a claim to be correct. The world isn't wikipedia.