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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.