An American "hacker" attacks the North Korean internet network

Computers at the Sci-Tech Complex in Pyongyang, North Korea.

North Korea has 1700 hackers.

AP - Wong Maye-E

Text by: Nicolas Rocca Follow

3 mins

For two weeks, several observers of North Korea had noticed disruptions on the country's websites.

The “hermit kingdom” – as it is nicknamed – was the victim of attacks on its network, which is however very limited with only a thousand IP addresses for 25 million inhabitants.

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From our correspondent in Seoul, 

According to the revelations of

,

they were not the work of a state as one might think, but of a single man.

“P4x” – that's his name – is an American who, alone at home, attacked the North Korean internet network.

This independent

managed to put out of use, for example, the site of the country's main newspaper, the

, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the airline Air Koryo.

A performance performed in pajamas, according to the American magazine, and with 

rather simple.

However, almost all the sites hosted inside the country have been damaged.

It should be noted that in North Korea, the internet is reserved for an ultra-minority and the intranet network is favored for communications and internal operations.

Revenge

Why did he attack North Korea?

It would simply be revenge for an attack he himself suffered a year ago by

North Korean

At the time, they were looking to go after IT security professionals in the United States.

And if "P4x" has managed to preserve most of its data, it has not digested to have been a target.

A year later, he organized retaliation himself after what he considers to have been a lack of response from the US government.

The aim was to show North Korea not to go after their country, and he found it "

" the impact he had had by operating alone.

He says he wants to attack only the government and not target the country's population.

The man is obviously quite proud of his coup, and wants to recruit other "hacktivists", contraction of

 and "activist" ("activist" in English), in order to be able to attack North Korea .

North Korean hackers active outside

the

country

The paradox is that he attacked North Korean servers, which therefore host sites within the country mainly intended for the outside.

Clearly, if he claims to have been able to recover interesting information, he has in reality only undermined sites intended for external and not internal propaganda.

Which is certainly annoying for the regime but far from being dramatic for the country.

►Also read: When North Korean "hackers" multiply cyberattacks

On the one hand because some of the sites are hosted outside the country, but above all because the North Korean

against whom “P4x” is trying to fight are largely outside North Korea.

They would be 1,700, some of them in Pyongyang, but especially in the big Chinese cities close to the border like Shenyang.

And they are indeed the online nuisance force of the regime, not necessarily the few propaganda sites with external aims.

This army of North Korean

managed to embezzle more than 400 million dollars (nearly 350 million euros) of cryptocurrencies last year.

A significant financial windfall for a regime more isolated than ever since the start of the pandemic.

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