Wired reported that a US hacker, known by his nickname "P4X", had claimed responsibility for shutting down North Korea's internet.

Despite the country's size, it has no more than a few dozen websites whose purpose is largely to distribute government propaganda to an international audience.

Over the years, hackers usually associated with notorious internet hacking acts have played the roles of champions defending their countries as well, exposing information about enemies and even trying to stop military build-ups near the borders amid rising tensions.

But B4X's reasons for attacking North Korea are different, because they are personal.

In January 2021, B4X received a file that a hacker claimed was an exploit that could help him with his projects.

Just 24 hours later, B4X found a Google blog post stating that North Korean hackers were targeting US security researchers.

The file that was sent to him contained a virus that had hacked to take control of his computer.

Fortunately, P4X opened the file on a virtual machine that protected his computer system from exploits, but it was clear to him that North Korea had targeted him.

The FBI contacted B4X to obtain details about the attack and the extent of the damage, but no protection was provided against similar attacks in the future.

The FBI contacted B4X to obtain details about the attack and the extent of the damage, but no protection was provided against similar attacks in the future (Reuters)

A year passed, and B4X had not heard of any action taken against North Korean hackers or even an official acknowledgment of the attack from the United States, so it decided to take matters into its own hands.

In screenshots shared with Wired, B4X explained how it discovered several vulnerabilities in software used by North Korean systems.

By launching attacks against the vulnerabilities, B4X was easily able to confuse and stop websites on its own, resulting in a denial of service attack that shuts down websites.

Most B4X attacks were automated and helped him identify more vulnerabilities in the system so he could exploit them further.

Wired confirmed the timing of the B4X attacks and the downtime of websites using an uptime measurement service called Pingdom, which downed major routers shortly after the attacks and also eliminated email and other Internet-based services besides websites.

B4X does not want to list these vulnerabilities publicly because it would make it easier for North Korea to fix them.

According to Wired's report, only a small portion of North Korea's population can access the internet with most of them only able to access the local internet after this attack.

So, the B4X attacks didn't bother everyone in North Korea but only a few officials from the current regime, which is exactly what B4X wants.

Wired said it wanted to take this a step further by forming a group of hacking activists who would ramp up their attacks on North Korea and steal more information from North Korean websites.

However, his attacks also represent a swing in the direction of the US government that has done little to protect white-hat hackers like him.

Some experts told Wired that his attacks could also disrupt intelligence efforts that the US government and its allies might be running.