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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
You act as if the common North Korean citizen has internet access.
Sony is bigger than many countries.
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.
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
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.
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.
...in other news, kim jong un now reportedly threatening verizon customer services with ground attack after being on hold for 90 minutes...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
"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.