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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."

4 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. someone probably died for this mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    someone probably died for this mistake

  2. It's not down... by bobbied · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  3. Re:criteria for advanced technology? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think what they're trying to say is,
    it was San Andreas' fault.

  4. Re:28 websites? by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Funny

    If we went back in time to when there only was 28 domains, I'd bet you a Mars Bar that there were only 28 websites.

    You'd lose that bet, if only because from 1973 defines 81 existing hostnames on the Internet, and the Web wasn't online until 1991.

    Thus if you did go back in time to when there were only 28 domains, there wouldn't be a web, and hence no websites.

    FYI, I prefer the traditional Mars bar (no almonds or peanut butter or whatever). Snack-size is acceptable.

    Yaz