North Korea’s internet suffered repeated disruptions this week, with several government-run websites going offline amid a suspected cyberattack. An analysis by US network monitoring company Kentik suggests that a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack may have caused the outages, reports Reuters. The disruptions affected the country’s internet network over a period of around 32 hours, beginning on Tuesday.
More than 40 official websites using North Korea’s .kp domain were reportedly affected, including those of the country’s foreign ministry and state news agency KCNA, according to South Korean media. Doug Madory, Kentik’s director of internet analysis, told Reuters that the outages occurred alongside several sudden increases in internet traffic from overseas locations.
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The traffic came from places including Vietnam and Venezuela, Madory said. “This traffic all started at the same time and it is coming from Vietnam and Venezuela. That’s definitely a DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service ) attack,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
A DDoS attack happens when a website or online service is flooded with large amounts of traffic. This can overwhelm its systems and prevent people from accessing it. Such attacks often involve traffic from multiple devices or networks.
Kentik’s data showed that the sharp rise in traffic began at around 11 AM local time on Tuesday. However, the analysis did not identify who was behind the activity. Madory also said the company had examined only part of the traffic directed at North Korea.
The exact cause of the outages has not been confirmed. South Korean media reports cited security experts who suggested that North Korea’s unreliable power supply could also be the reason behind the disruption.
The incident appeared to be separate from wider internet problems linked to the disclosure of vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language.
North Korea operates a tightly controlled internet network, with access to global online services heavily restricted for most of its population.
In late 2014, the country suffered a complete internet outage that lasted several hours. The incident followed controversy surrounding a Sony Pictures comedy about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.