Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Brings Down North Korea's Entire Internet (mirror.co.uk)
After a North Korean system administrator misconfigured its nameserver allowing anyone to query it and get the list of the domains that exist for .kp, it was revealed that the secretive country only has 28 websites. That's 28 websites for a country with nearly 25 million people. Naturally, the story was published all across the web, including on Reddit, which resulted in a high number of users visiting North Korea's websites. Mirror.co.uk reports: When a list of North Korea's available websites was posted on Reddit, the surge of visitors to the reclusive state's online offering overloaded the servers. North Korea runs a completely locked-down version of the internet that consists of only 28 "websites" that the population is allowed to view. However, a technical slip-up allowed a GitHub user to work their way into the country's computer network and view the websites from the outside. As the GitHub user puts it: "One of North Korea's top level name servers was accidentally configured to allow global [Domain Name System] transfers. This allows anyone who performs [a zone transfer request] to the country's ns2.kptc.kp name server to get a copy of the nation's top level DNS data." Pretty soon, links to all the websites were posted on Reddit, where thousands of visitors took the opportunity to see what the web looks like from Pyongyang. Reddit's surge of traffic isn't the first time North Korea's internet has been knocked out. In 2014, the country suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that was believed to have originated from the U.S. Redditor BaconBakin points out that while North Korea has 28 websites, GTA V has 83 websites. They added, "I think it's safe to say that San Andreas is more technologically advanced than North Korea."
someone probably died for this mistake
You just started WW3. captcha: invading
You capitalist pigs cannot access it because der Leader has decreed it so! (and somebody just pulled the cable from the PRNK side of our border router).
Reddit didn't do anything! It was ALL part of our plan to get attention....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Huh, wonder how much malware got served out?
"while North Korea has 28 websites, GTA V has 83 websites. They added, "I think it's safe to say that San Andreas is more technologically advanced than North Korea.""
quite apart from the notion about websites being in "san andreas", is number of websites a good criteria to judge level of technology?
imo, no.
most likely death or in a forced labor camp... along with his entire family for this "mistake".
Not kidding. When I was in specialized military training program we saw crazy looking dude with a unkempt uniform and absolutely no personal hygiene. We made a couple snide remarks amongst ourselves and later mentioned the guy to an instructor.
He told us that the guy was from Saudi Arabia. He also told us that every foreigner in the school always passed. A few years back, he didn't specify how many, a Saudi officer took the course and failed. The government beheaded him and apologized to the school.
So, good job Reddit. If he had a family, their probably gone as well.
No good dirty hackers trying to start another war with their recklessness.
the country would have been Slashdotted.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You can't blame Redditors for being responsible for a despotic regime's policies of executing anyone who upsets or embarrasses the leadership. The blame lies squarely at the top. It always has, and this is precisely why it is a basic human right to live in a free and just society.
But while we're at it, I dare say that the blame for North Korea's situation also lies with its people. I know that the people are brainwashed, poor, coerced. The Western media likes to characterize the DPRK as a tyrannical government enslaving its hapless citizens, because doing so conveniently focuses the blame on the regime. But that same regime does not operate in a vacuum, as isolated as it is from the rest of the world. The reality is that a large segment of North Korean society actually believes the propaganda that is fed to them, much like how many Americans believe the propaganda they are exposed to. Being shown stark evidence that their worldview is wrong, such people actually redouble their fervor in supporting the narrative they have been led to believe. This phenomenon, carefully exploited, is the seed of fascism.
Naw, the families get discredited and sent to labor/retraining camps where they get punished for trafficking in rat meat
ftfy
Hmm, I think it has been a long time since we routinely saw the slashdot effect take down sites. Since I cannot see any of the NK sites, the posting of this article on slashdot may have resulted in a the first slashdot effect taking down a country.
Being a tech site, I'm curious: When did a registered domain become referred to as a single website. Having looked at the articles, I see plenty of reference to 28 domains, but no mention of how many sub-domains each has, nor how many sites (blogs/static page/wiki/whatever) are hosted on each domain, and so I was wondering why it is being categorically stated here that there are only 28 websites. My understanding has always been that there can be multiple websites on a single domain, but Slashdot seems to be equating 1 domain=1 website here (and on looking at the links, even some inaccessible domains are being categorised as websites, when it is equally possible they are registered purely for email and have no webpages attached).
It's hard to believe now, but Slashdot used to be able to do this too. Of course these days the slashdot effect would be lucky to bring up a few ads for lawn care and hip replacements.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybe...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So, Reddit works to root out corruption domestically and shut down totalitarian propaganda outlets, while Slashdot whines about "gender identity" and slams Trump.
Slashdot is nothing more than a pretensions 4chan.
"much like how many Americans believe the propaganda they are exposed to"
Americans have unfettered access to numerous sources of information each spouting their own version of the facts and biases. In your arrogance you some how believe you are the only one who understands the truth. And stop with the generalizations of "Americans". "Americans" are suppose to be fat and lazy but some how end up dominating the world in international sporting events such as the Olympics. "Americans" are supposed to be knuckle dragging idiots but some how lead the world in technological advances and it's Universities and Colleges admit students from all over the world. "Americans" are suppose to be nothing but a bunch of racists and xenophobes but people are lined up in front of American foreign embassies trying to get visas and start the paperwork for immigrating to the US. Others don't bother with the formalities and just enter illegally, How many people are standing in line to immigrate to China, Russia, NK, Mexico, and similar hell holes throughout the world. The US has the most diverse population on the planet. All nationalities, ethnic groups, and races. People bitch and moan about US military bases around the world and then go into a blind panic every time the US even mentions downsizing and closing bases.
I don't understand the relevance of his uniform and hygeine.
That *will* be an improvement. Ask Seth Rogen how taunting North Korea worked out for him.
I backed it up on 8" floppy.
Reddit Brings Down North Korea's Entire Public Internet
Maybe you are the one who needs to get out more. Mexico is the number one destination for US expats, pushing 1 million. If it was really that bad, across the WHOLE country, they would not live there. Philippines is in the news a lot and sounds bad, and is the #2 US expat destination. Ihttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_States#Overseas_US_populations
That's why we noticed him.
You just killed a North Korean system administrator
Butt hurt much?
I thought Best Korea's domain was .bk
Have gnu, will travel.
I dare say that the blame for North Korea's situation also lies with its people. I know that the people are brainwashed, poor, coerced. The Western media likes to characterize the DPRK as a tyrannical government enslaving its hapless citizens, because doing so conveniently focuses the blame on the regime. But that same regime does not operate in a vacuum, as isolated as it is from the rest of the world.
Yes, the North Korean people are to at least partially to blame, just like battered wives bear some blame for their situation. That the West characterizes the North Korea government in an almost cartoonish light is due entirely to the unbelievable disconnect of its leadership from any norms of social interaction.
You are wrong, and the blame lies entirely with the leadership.
See, North Korea, the world really, really wants to be your buddy!
You are wrong, and the blame lies entirely with the leadership.
If we all took that attitude we could have avoided many wars in history.
Oh and the USA wouldn't exist.
But if everything lies squarely with the leadership of a country you don't need all those guns right? Because the only reason you have them is to arm yourself against your government. But you don't need to take control or fight back.
So, good job Reddit. If he had a family, their probably gone as well.
And here we are discussion this story on the front page, likely further helping spread the word and making other people interested in accessing those sites further putting them under load.
You Monster!
Actually, it is more likely a combination of both, but not in the way you think. I can think of a number of effects at play
Firstly, we know that Nazi's used Jews as guards and administrators in the death camps. Why'd they do it? Fear of individual persecution, and a desire to achieve a better circumstance. In situations like this it makes sense to sell out your neighbour for personal gain. I guess you'd call it a combination of greed and fear.
Secondly, there is the fact that they live in a controlling regime that makes dissent very difficult. Specifically you should google the Hawthorne effect. Basically, if there is a chance you're under surveillance then you alter your behaviour accordingly. They government tries to either achieve of implement panopticism (google it).
Thirdly, North Korea constitutes what social psychologists and political scientists call 'total instutionalism'. They've been cut off so well (28 websites remember) and so long that they are not only disconnected from the outside world, it doesn't exist to them. I mean, they know it is there, but they know nothing about it. They may never have heard the world revolution.
Fourthly, social facilitation in a police state is completely different than in a liberal democracy. You never know who is going to dob you in.
Finally, there are probably some people who just plain believe the lies. They've grown up with the indoctrination and just buy in.
I think it is a discredit to ourselves to try and say this is just a lazy population or an overbearing dictator. There are a number of complex social psychological phenomenons happening, as well as a totalitarian power structure. The problem is hard to understand. The solution is easy though - great leader will be the first guy with his back against the wall when the revolution comes.
The real news here is mandatoryasshole chose to publish the .kp zone files in a GitHub repo. The repo contains no code. None. There are now 133 worthless forks of the repo by social scum. Zero forks contain changes. Zero. Because fake coder bros fork repos to be social.
GitHub is fucking shit for moronic asshole scum who pretend to be coders.
Fuck GitHub.
You seem to have magnified the import of my original statement in your mind.
In relative terms, Americans are indeed far more diverse in their viewpoints and backgrounds than virtually all other nationalities on the planet. And yes, in with respect to access to information, Americans do have the ability to investigate on their own and are, again, relatively much more free to express their own ideas and positions.
However, many (which is the exact word I used in my previous post) Americans are horribly susceptible to propaganda. It is also true that there are many Americans who are smart enough to detect such sophistry. Of course, the United States is not unique in this; any nation's citizens are vulnerable to the machinations of those in power. This has been demonstrated throughout American history and more broadly, world history; but it is all the more evident in the current geopolitical climate. Free access to information and freedom of expression are only parts of the story; these are not in themselves sufficient to inoculate society against the persistent threat of tyranny, as the Founding Fathers had recognized. What they perhaps did not anticipate was the slow encroachment of ignorance upon the public; the systemic failure to educate people, to teach them how to think and reason for themselves. (The familiar saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" applies here.)
Consequently, political partisanship in the US has recently led to explicit jingoistic, xenophobic, and racist violence. This is only possible for the reasons I already explained. And the notion of American exceptionalism is merely one manifestation--albeit a rather stark one--of the more fundamental inability to accept facts that contradict an existing worldview when the emotional and cultural investment into that worldview has been considerable and lifelong.
To circle back to North Korea, then, we can see through the lens of history that despotic regimes do not simply appear de novo in a society. They come to power through the exploitation and manipulation of fear, and the slow but steadily increasing intellectual disenfranchisement of each passing generation. We saw this in China during the Cultural Revolution; Russia in the rise of the Soviet Union and more recently, the collusion of the oligarchs to permanently place Putin in power; and Germany post World-War I. The United States, if it is not careful, is just as susceptible, despite the protections afforded by the Constitution, so long as some Americans wallow in their own self-delusions of greatness and superiority. In the course of human civilization, 240 years is but a blink of an eye.
Actually, it is more likely a combination of both, but not in the way you think. I can think of a number of effects at play
I think there is a key distinction between moral blame and possible choices.
The moral blame is 100% on the leadership. Yes, the oppressed could do something about it. They could muster exceptional courage in the face of tremendous psychological pressure. But that possibility, regardless of its probability of success, doesn't at all detract from the total blame that must be laid at the feet of the oppressors.
Yes, the battered wife could have done something, but she has none of the blame.
I still think it is more complex than you're giving it credit. For example, The Glorious Leader is a bad guy - he's really responsible. And he tells the general's what to do, so they're responsible.
Lets use one of them as an example, say the minister for corrective services. He's responsible for the people tortured and killed in prison camps. Right? He tells the directors of the prisons what to do, so they're responsible. But they may not be the one's who are ordering all the people tortured and killed, so they're less responsible. What about the grounds keepers, janitors, secretaries, guards? Without them the prison might shut down - so they're all responsible. But not as responsible as the prison director. And definitely not as responsible as a general or minister. But they're a bit responsible.
What about the apartment full of people who didn't fight back against the secret police when they were arresting the guy unfairly? Are they responsible?
What about the US - the global hegemon, who could fly planes in an topple the regime? Surely they're the global leadership, so this moral duty would fall to them.
Or China, the dominant regional power?
Or the UN with the UNSC? They sent forces into Iraq claiming the presence of WMDs that didn't exist. Surely they have a responsibility based on precedent to topple North Korea? Are they the global leadership and therefore morally responsible.
Or how about the liberal democratic theory that people have moral equivalence and the right to self determination? That would mean that the leadership is only in power because they let it be. Are the people then responsible and the leaders of the republic?
I think leadership here is a very nebulous concept. Hannah Arendt covered this very well in Eichmann in Jerusalem. These arguments are nothing new. They were the same ones that confronted the Nuremburg trials when they were hanging people. How do you measure how responsible a person is? Where do you draw the 'leadership' line?
"they are not only disconnected from the outside world, it doesn't exist to them. I mean, they know it is there, but they know nothing about it."
Well, that also fits your standard American fellow, doesn't it?
In a facetious sense, yep. :)
Realistically, if an American wants education, they can get it. Further, if I want to educate Americans (I'm not one) then I can travel to your country, stand on the corner and shout obscenities about Trump, Clinton, Obama... whoever.
The NKs have no access to media outside the country, low education prospects. People can't easily get information to them. The risk of having a contrary opinion is death, as is the risk of espousing it.
That being said, as a non-American, I think Americans are particularly poorly educated in global affairs. But then again, I could have sample bias - my academic background is international relations.
Call me a domain Nazi, but not every registered domain is a website, and there could be many websites hosted on the same domain (including, but not limited to subdomains), and multiple domains can resolve to the same IP/website. Is Google one website? Even Gmail is a subdomain of google.com. So we can't say for sure how many websites there are in North Korea based solely on domain data.
(So much for a Unicode support?)
Why can't North Korea bring down Reddit's entire website? That would be an improvement.
Are you suggesting they nuke the servers hosting Reddit?
Dangerous!
Not necessarily. If everything you could ever need is at one website, then there is no need for thousands. I would call that advanced.
I wouldn't want to be the guy who misconfigured the DNS server and brought shame to the nation and his great leader. He's probably already dead.
>plebbitors
>responsible
kek
The WinNuke exploit was patched long, long ago dude.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
It goes the other way too, the leadership may not be aware of all the details.
They may not be aware that prisoners are being tortured or experimented on, or they just might not care, but they may not have directly ordered these actions to be carried out.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I think first first think NK will do is execute that poor system admin.
Because poor hygeine and unkempt uniform is normally punishable in the military.
. . . banned from /r/pyongyang.
Though I guess my age is showing in that. Slashdot isn't slashdotting much anymore these days.
And yet, North Korea has actual nuclear weapons.
What if it was intentional and now half of the Redditors have malware on their systems?
If you think the NKoreans couldn't write it, then look a bit westwards.
Back in the day a link on Slashdot could result in that site being overwhelmed essentially DDOSing the site?
Those were the days... now its sites like Reddit that have that effect and this time, they can claim to taking down an entire country.
The entire country also shares a /22
Yeah, because no populace has ever selected their own leadership that turned out to be a grave mistake before.
Signed,
Millions of Germans who elected National Socialist representatives to the Reichstag.
Maybe 5 years ago.
Not on the Slashdot of today. Remember when it was Slashdot that used to be responsible for the largest Internet stampedes? Those days are long fucking gone.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yes, this poor guy's mundane detail probably just cost him his life.
Brutal.
Imagine living in a country with access to only 28 websites and STILL having to pay Google to be on page 1 of search results.
Easiest.....sysadmin.....job....ever
Admin for only 28 domains and yet still managed to botch the firewall ACL(s?)
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Too bad NK has no say in choosing who their leader is. It's Kim's all the way down.
Someone must have copied the data/websites or archived them. Where can the rest of the world now see a copy of what was there?
Netcraft confirming the sites' activities bringing them down again.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
You just killed a North Korean system administrator
..and the next three family generations.
The US has the most diverse population on the planet.
Speaking of access to information sources... the US ranks 204 (of 210) for diversity in this listing. Australia is 11th, Canada is 34th. The data for this listing is somewhat flawed, but I'm sure you'll provide an alternative source showing the US being #1.
People bitch and moan about US military bases around the world and then go into a blind panic every time the US even mentions downsizing and closing bases.
Well as long as we are ridiculously oversimplifying things, I'll just say the people bitching and moaning are usually the unpopular western-backed governments that do not represent the populace and therefore need the US presence to keep them in power.
Americans are indeed far more diverse in their viewpoints and backgrounds than virtually all other nationalities on the planet.
Seriously where does this bullshit come from?
Hmmm
Those days are long fucking gone.
We still cause an internet stampede, just that modern day networks are far more resilient to such assault. I can serve up on my cable modem more bandwidth than some hosts could back in the day.
Speaking of back in the day, you realise we're talking about a country with 28 websites right? How many CDNs do you think they use to serve up their websites and just how well distributed do you think they are around the globe? Hell I'm surprise they don't crash when someone pings them.
The Donald loves North Korea. It's his vision for our future!